Casey Hill NewPages

Literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor. 

          —Chief Justice William O. Douglas

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Cartoon sketched in 2006.  It is shameful that NewPages.com refuses to list The American Dissident, a 501c3 nonprofit journal of literature, democracy, and dissidence created in 1998 to push back against academic corruption, with the many other literary magazines listed.  Denise Hill and Casey Hill have no backbone at all.  They canNOT bear criticism.  They are like the bulk of thin-skinned poets and professors and journalists today.  Sadly, they are incapable of comprehending the above statement by Justice William O. Douglas.  Sadly, they cannot comprehend the following two statements either.

The selector begins, ideally, with a presumption in favor of liberty of thought; the censor does not. The aim of the selector is to promote reading not to inhibit it; to multiply the points of view which will find expression, not limit them; to be a channel for communication, not a bar against it.
           —Lester Asheim, “Not Censorship but Selection” (Wilson Library Bulletin, 1953)

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of all censorships. There is the whole case against censorships in a nutshell. 

           —George Bernard Shaw

Denise Hill, Casey Hill

Both Denise Hill and Casey Hill, online lit-mag publishers of New Pages are in the censoring business.  Surprise?  Not at all.  Poets and academics tend to favor censorship, for they tend to have fragile, bourgeois egos with a sense of superiority.  The academic chancellors of the haughty Academy of American Poets illustrate the point.  The Hills refuse to list The American Dissident with the other literary journals listed, as if it didn't even exist.  Bravo!  After their flat rejection, I satirized them as censors for the front cover of The American Dissident #19.  Now, will Denise select the above for her lit-mag cover of the week blog inanity?   No.  Why not?  Because she is a poet/academic censor.  Period.  Dare criticize her little literary business, which sucks on the teat of the taxpayer, and be ostracized.  Period.  It is very simple in the world of American poesy.  Still, how difficult for me it is to comprehend the censor's mind.  As editor of The American Dissident, I always publish the harshest criticism of the journal in each and every issue.  What's the big deal?  Well, you'd have to ask the Hill ilk.  Poets should not be in the censorship business.  Period.  

NewPages

Banned by NewPages !!!

Depicted above is the front cover of issue #19 of The American Dissident, which was banned by NewPages editors Denise and Casey Hill.  NewPages.com lists literary magazines.  Thus, for its readers, The American Dissident does not exist.  Poets & Writers mag also banned the magazine.  I sent D&C a copy of the issue, but neither responded, not even a thank you! Utne Reader naively bills NewPages as "the web's alt-press playground." But it is really just another alt-press playground CENSOR. For the brief correspondence I had with the Hills, see www.theamericandissident.org/orgs/new_pages.html.
Here's a poem from the issue by David Ochs:

The Kid Strikes Out Again
I'd seen the kid at
the poetry reading before
he was ambitious
had his work
printed on a broadside
and handed them out
with his phone number
he asked for feedback
like he wanted you
to tell him of
his great potential genius
but they just
weren't that good

the time before when he’d read
he mentioned he’d written “in form”
taught to him by Dr. James Cushing
who teaches at the local university
the poor kid thought
Cushing was some kind of
mountain top poetry guru
and Cushing probably got
huge ego strokes
that the kid thought Cushing
could wave his magic wand
and turn him into the next Ginsberg
but the kid was so star struck
he didn't realize
how lousy and unreadable
Cushing’s poems are

the kid read all serious
but no one paid attention