Sex, sexuality and sexual explicitness have long been controversial in the United States, where the attitude has traditionally been repressive and deeply laden with sexual guilt. Prior to the mid-1960s, sexually explicit books like Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer were banned, copies confiscated, and booksellers intimidated for selling them even after the ban was lifted in 1961. It wasn’t until 1964 that the US Supreme Court declared Miller’s book not to be obscene and its sale protected...

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The other day while waiting for the bus on a beautiful, cold, sunny afternoon, snowflakes began to fall. I composed this little poem in my head, then wrote it down in my notebook afar taking my seat. Poems often come to me this way.


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“What are you doing, son?” the American soldier with the Japanese face asks.

“Drawing.” Seiji holds up a scrap of cardboard on which he has drawn a picture of his old neighborhood before Tokyo was firebombed and his neighborhood erased.

“Nice work!” the soldier says in Japanese. He squats down to have a closer look. “Is that all you have to draw on?”

“Mmmm, I found it over there.” He aims a charcoal-begrimed finger at a nearby trash heap next to the concrete remains of wha...

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My apologies for being tardy with posting on my blog. The main problem has been my laptop which is on its last legs and too unreliable to use. So I bought an iMac and found myself, as an old Windows user, beginning a new learning experience. It's been a challenge, and a happy one. I now have things figured out sufficiently to get back to my novel, book reviewing an blogging.

Now for the subject of reviewing books, something I've done in tandem with writing poetry and fiction since the early 19...
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Since it was a beautiful, sunny day, grandfather decided to walk along the Motsukisamu River, which was near the condominium where he and grandmother lived.

As he was leaving, grandmother said: “Now, you be careful of those dogs that run around there, because they bark, and they've been known to bite, especially one of them. That little monster is a vicious little gray devil with very sharp teeth, who has b...

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The next day when grandfather went out for a walk, the raven didn't appear until he was a good fifteen minutes into his walk and had stopped to admire a little league baseball game that was going on in a nearby park. As he stood there, he heard the sound of a creaking hinge coming from a nearby bush. Turning his head toward the sound, he saw a large raven sitting atop the bush, looking at him.

 “Is that you?” he as...

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Over the next few weeks or so I'm going to dropping some of the stories in my book Grandfather and the Raven. This is the first story one. The book, which is available in paperback and Kindle, is published by Night Publishing (UK). I think you will enjoy the stories.

One morning while grandfather was out walking, a big raven flew down and lit in front of him, stopping him in his tracks. “Kaaaaaa! ” the raven said. Then,...

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This is a story about Grandfather and a deer that predates Grandfather's meeting Sir Raven, his big raven friend. Set on the farm of Grandfather's brother, it is a poignant story of compassion and recovery.

Grandfather and the Deer

 

One

 

 

          One morning when grandfather and grandmother were visiting his younger brother on the family farm, grandfather looked out the window and said:

          “Look, broth...

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Call it writer's block or hitting a roadblock, getting there happens to all writers. It happened to me three or four days ago after sailing along smoothly in my novel about Tokyo artist Seiji. Reaching a scene change, I was stuck, up-to-the-hubcaps in mud, dead battery dead. Stared at the blank space and couldn't think of a thing. Nada.

Then this morning I made a startlingly simple discovery: I was trying to remember something I had deleted ... a bit of scenery from the new chapter, but it wou...
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What struck me most reading George Polley’s books, Grandfather and the Raven and The Old Man and the Monkey are their ability to relocate the reader geographically without dislocating him culturally or intellectually. The place is maybe Japan but the moral of the stories are to be applied everywhere, and on everyone.

My children read both books and enjoyed them immensely. They appreciated the sense of adventure, readability and the uniqueness of the style. I appreciated their subtle moral...

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It's often called "writer's block" -- you know, when you're sitting there in front of a blank screen or sheet of paper and your mind is blank ... for days. I call it "when the well runs dry,. because that's the way it feels. I've used too much of the "water" in it, it's dry, and I have to wait until the spring replenishes it before I can write again. It's a wake up call for me to sit back, relax, and let the well replenish, which it always does.

This happens to all writers. I use it to relax, ...
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