For

The interplay between involuntary acts and cognition (""Suddenly thinking somewhere in the breath--along// the breath, is an understood place"") centers Snow's second collection. The governing influence of its three sections of long-lined lyrics is Jorie Graham, who is all over lines such as the above, as well as the dashes, parentheses and brackets that break up the text throughout. In fact, the book as a whole attempts the meditational metaphysics that Graham has made famous, finding abstract ideas swirling around ""every slip left out to dry,"" or a recurrent ""boundary [coastline]."" The main emphasis is on thinking through the intertwinement of the internal and external as held together by the body and self of the female speaker. It's an approach that works best in ""Bowl,"" where images of ""Something there./ Something white there under the water"" lead to a ""tug"" that encloses scientific laws, rock gardens, television and the poet (""I am That"") within its textual parentheses, but which more often collapses under the weight of abstraction and stylistic tics. When the poet breaks through with an I that's just trying to make sense of things--"" somehow I am fourteen and panicking""--the poems are refreshed. But repetitions tend to dull rather than emphasize the insights, making it difficult to identify which of them is being reinforced. Readers looking for philosophical verse that engages the postfeminist, public-private predicament would be better served by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge's Empathy or Four Year-Old Girl. (Apr.)