Poetry. Howard Schwartz is a contemporary master of the parable, the short lyric and the tale. In BREATHING IN THE DARK, he has multiplied his dreams, his myths, and his stories into poems that grow quietly and firmly from the secret root stock of his imagination. That side of Judaism and that side of poetry which is dreamlike, mythical, and memory-ridden is Schwartz's domain. BREATHING IN THE DARK is a book of human tenderness, gentle humor, and more than a dash of mysticism. To read these poems is to enter a state of meditation in which the two worlds of ordinary life and that of spirit are combined.