Many of Levertov’s poems are explicitly about her anti-American sentiments regarding the involvement of the United States in Vietnam. In “From a Plane,” the poet reflects on how Vietnam looks untouched if viewed from the air, “the great body / not torn apart, though raked and raked / by our claws-.” “The Distance” points to the differences between the comfortable lives of the anti-war protesters in America and the beautiful and brave struggle of those soldiers fighting for Ho Chi Minh. In “The Pilots,” a visit to American POWs ignites a conflict in the poet’s heart regarding their ignorance or knowledge of what they did with their killing bombs. The powerful “Fragrance of Life, Odor of Death” describes a Vietnam where death is everywhere but the odor is that of the “good smell / of life.” In America, where no bombs have ever landed, the poet relates that “everywhere, a faint seepage, / I smell death.”