The Old Language: Poems on the Company of Animals

I bought this volume of poetry because I read the author's Something Red and I wanted more. I felt a profound resonance to the animals we live with in his portrayals in the novel, and when I opened this slim volume-- The Old Language, I stood outside in the sunlight of my yard and read every poem until I had read them all. His voice invites. I can't articulate all of my responses. I am moved. I find his depiction of his relationship with his wife, his intimate partner slipped in between the lines. It's so warm and familiar, for I too, have a spouse who is an unfailing source of compassion and wonder to me. He shares the imperfections of daily interactions, depicts character and mood. The poems remind me of Elgar's musical depictions of friends in his Enigma Variations. I am sorrowed past weeping by the loss of his parrot, the loss of a dear dog. Douglas Nicholas has the ability to pare feeling down to the essential turning point, the point of pain or of joy, each so acute, they cut.I feel embarrassed to give so many stars as though I had not thought but done a knee-jerk positive. Please believe me that these are poems you want to read if you want to sink into the contemplation of our animal humanity, our friendships that transgress human language, that bridge even the differing imprints of our animal descent.

I loved the topic and the writing. I'm not a critic in any way, shape or form I just liked the way the words were put together. I gave a copy to my sister, a more discerning poetry reader, and she really liked the poems as well. She had just lost her dog, and they were a fitting form of comfort.

I've already bought one extra of this, as a gift, and will buy more. Yes, animals, but also a poet who can do anything with language, and does - like Ella on stage, including jumps, leaps and the sheer pleasure of giving pleasure via a stupefying technique. Two samples:From "China the Parrot":` . . . She has an eerie chuckle and from the cage she calls me,and when she calls me she says Come hereand she says Come onand she calls me by someone else's name,the only name she knows,Irwin, which signifiesBoar Friend'No, not a typo: boar friend; the man's a philologist. Also a major poet.From "Little Ghost":"Step out into the nightonto your cricket-haunted porchdeep in the countryside,or onto your building's tarpaper rooftophigh above the traffic roar, the banshee sirens.Pale light and black shadow:the moon is full. Take from your pocketa quarter piece, hold it up before you:see how the mighty Washington,though stamped so small in silver,eclipses all of the argent moon,because the coin is held so closeto your one open eye.Audrey, that little dog,Always kept herself close to meFor love and for protection;"The mood and mastery of "Little Ghost" is sustained to the end of the poem. In fact, each poem in the book is a story. Moreover, the whole book makes one story, as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg Ohio makes one story, as J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories makes one story (if you stop to think about it), because the author has given us one complete world, his own, which we didn't have before. Lucky us.