On a small scale, the decade of the 1970s was a time of personal change in the subject matter of Levertov's poetry, and, on a large scale, these were years of sometimes odd, sometimes benign change. In America, the 1960s were unprecedented in their all-encompassing antiwar, free-love, politically radical themes, and some of that carried over into the 1970s. But by the middle of the decade - after the Vietnam War had ended, Richard Nixon had resigned, the Watergate scandal finished its media blitz, and the rock-and-roll sounds of Vanilla Fudge and the Rolling Stones gave way to the disco beat of the Bee Gees and Donna Summer - many Americans were left disillusioned by their own government's clandestine activities and doubtful that the fiery, high-minded social missions of the previous decade held any real value for the doubting, unenthusiastic members of this generation. As a...