Mudluscious is a great word. Portmanteau neologisms aren’t just for techno-geeks and superstar girl groups (remember “bootylicious?”). Mudluscious was of course the doing of e.e. cummings from “In Just-/spring.” But this post is not about “puddle-wonderful” spring (I have to save some material for next spring!).
In my last post I mentioned Marge Piercy’s 1982 poem “To Be of Use.” In it (below) she uses the phrase “the mud and the muck.” Whenever I hear that line I can’t help but hear Trisha Yearwood’s first number one hit, “She’s in Love with the Boy.” It tells the story of Katie and Tommy, “Jack and Diane” wannabees who don’t have the approval of Katie’s dad. That’s because Tommy “got the short of the stick” when it comes to brains and arrives to pick up Katie in his “beat-up Chevy truck” by “laying on the horn / Splashing through the mud and the muck.”
Could the song’s writer have known the Piercy Poem? A quick GoogleBooks search reveals that many authors have used the phrase. Books as diverse as Edward Michael Pavlic’s recent book on modernism in African-American literature, Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, a saucy Victorian Romance novel, and Phonics for Dummies all contain that exact line. Of the 208 hits, however, a good number (I’m going to guess 10%) contain Piercy’s poem. These books include a self-help guide and William Ayers’ book on education. The earliest example of an author using the phrase—and the only one to antedate Piercy’s poem—was in a book called Little Mother America by Helen Fitzgerald Sanders, published in 1919.
This brings up an interesting question. Given its ubiquity, is Piercy’s phrase an example of folksy charm or facile alliteration? Is this a phrase everyone uses? Your input, dear reader, is most welcome.
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