The Old Language
Subtitle: Poems on the Company of Animals
Publisher: CreateSpace
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York City
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 50
Description: A collection of poems reflecting on the companionship of humans and non-humans; a tribute to animals who have been part of the author's family; a meditation on "The Old Language," the nonverbal ways that humans and non-humans talk to each other. 
"This work is mature, the writing brilliant and rich and deep, the content charged with energy. This is an incredible writer, one with a deep and wide scope of vision." Linda Hogan, novelist; poet, author of Rounding the Human Corners: Poems and People of the Whale: A Novel 
"[Douglas Nicholas has a] quality which I find very engaging, namely, a kind of urban gaslight aura which manages to be new/old simultaneously. This is dense stuff . . . this work requires a slow pace. Take the poem ['A Calling-Up Song'], for instance; I could see teaching this one to a class for a week or more and still not finishing with its various resonances. . . . "I have been reading Douglas Nicholas's poems for some time now, and always with increasing pleasure. Perhaps their greatest virtue is their inclusivity, for these are poems of color, detail and texture. At a time when far too many poets are justifying their metabolic deficiencies in the name of Minimalism, Nicholas is striding the landscape as vigorously as Whitman ever did. He's a Maximalist, in my book, and we the readers are the better for it. A Nicholas poem is always a feast. . . ." David Kirby, Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English, FSU; poetry reviewer, The New York Times Book Review; poet, author of The Temple Gate Called Beautiful and The House on Boulevard Street