MUD-LUSCIOUS: Poems for Spring

“Never forget that the subject is as important as your feeling; the mud puddle itself is as important as your pleasure in looking at it or splashing through it.  Never let the mud puddle get lost in the poetry –because, in many ways the mud puddle is the poetry.” –Valerie Worth

e.e. cummings wrote [in Just-]a poem about spring titled in Just-. In the poem, cummings described the season as being “mud-luscious” and “puddle-wonderful.” And aren’t puddles and mud fun to play in when we’re young? I know I loved splashing in puddles and making mud pies when I was a child. I’m sure many of you did, too.

 Click here to read in Just-.

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Today, I ‘m posting some poems in celebration of mud and muddy puddles.

The Muddy Puddle

By Dennis Lee

I am sitting

In the middle
Of a rather Muddy
Puddle,
With my bottom
Full of bubbles
And my rubbers
Full of Mud,

While my jacket

And my sweater
Go on slowly
Getting wetter..

Click here to read the rest of the poem.

Haiku

By Issa

A bush warbler…

Muddy feet wiped
On the plum blossoms

MUD

By Elaine Magliaro

Messy, mushy, mucky

Ucky, oozy, wonderful wet 

Dark chocolate dirt perfect for pie making

DIRTY DOG

(A Triolet)

By Elaine Magliaro

Dirty, dirty, dirty dog!
Didn’t heed your master—NO!
Thought you’d run into the bog.
Dirty, dirty, dirty dog!

(I rant in my mad monologue.)
You frolicked where you shouldn’t go.
Dirty, dirty, dirty dog!
Didn’t heed your master—NO!



MUD by Polly Chase Boyden

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BOOK GIVEAWAY

My book giveaway for the fourth week and final days of National Poetry Month will be Puddle Wonderful: Poems to Welcome Spring with poems selected by Bobbi Katz and illustrations by Mary Morgan. I’ll announce the winner of this book on Wednesday, May 1^st.



NOTE: Puddle Wonderful is a Random House PICTUREBACK®. It was published in 1992 and is now out of print. It includes many wonderful poems about the spring season—including works by Eve Merriam, Bobbi Katz, Elizabeth Coatsworth, Charlotte Zolotow, J. Patrick Lewis, e.e. cummings, Dennis Lee, Lilian Moore, Langston Hughes, Karla Kuskin, and John Updike. It would be a great book to share with a young child and would make an excellent addition to an elementary classroom collection.