Holy Cussing

By Robert Morgan Robert Morgan

When the most intense revivals swept

the mountains just a century ago,

participants described the shouts and barks

in unknown tongues, the jerks of those who tried

to climb the walls, the holy dance and laugh.

But strangest are reports of what was called

the holy cuss. Sometimes a man who spoke

in tongues and leapt for joy would break into

an avalanche of cursing that would stun

with brilliance and duration. Those that heard

would say the holy spirit spoke as from

a whirlwind. Words burned on the air like chains

of dynamite. The listeners felt transfigured,

and felt true contact and true presence then,

as if the shock of unfamiliar

and blasphemous profanity broke through

beyond the reach of prayer and song and hallo

to answer heaven's anger with its echo.

Reprinted from Southern Poetry Review, Vol. 43, No. 1, 2004 by permission of the author. Copyright © 2004 by Robert Morgan, whose most recent book is The Strange Attractor: New and Selected Poems, Louisiana State University Press, 2004

Biography

MORGAN, Robert (1944– ), grew up in a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. He attended the University of North Carolina at both Chapel Hill and Greensboro, where he studied with the poet Fred Chappell. After working as a salesman, house-painter, and farmer, he joined the faculty of Cornell University where he teaches English and creative writing.

Both descriptively and musically, Morgan’s poetry is . . .

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