Miller reaches for the unusual phrase, the non sequitur, but her subjects are traditional--love and the possibilities of language: ``now when the firemen put out the stars I think of it, . . ./ it showed me how exhausted we had been, touching language/directly.'' Such incongruity is a theme as well as a symptom, particularly with respect to the poet in contemporary life: ``You live in a sunny place/ and work in a sealed building. 10 mph on Interstate 405/by 2000. The twentieth century, begun in Vienna, has ended/ in California./ . . . gas meters on your left and electric meters on your right.'' Dailiness fills a hot, mountainous desert with scud missiles, helicopters, and environmental disasters, a psychological landscape in which the world's anxiety is juxtaposed with bits of the speaker's sexual life to create a dry, disembodied eroticism. Miller's ambition is admirable, but her attempts to arrive at a new language can leave the reader stranded. For sophisticated collections.-- Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New York Religion
