With the Colors Songs of the American Service — Reading Notes

Colloquial Voices and Soldier Types

Appleton populates the first section with named or titled figures: Cookie Jim, Bugler Bill, Heinie the Hostler, Briggs of Base No. 8. Each poem adopts a distinct speaker, often in a rough, conversational idiom. In 'The Alien,' the speaker notes that 'the red and the blue and the white' are not just colors but something 'heaps better and finer.' The diction is deliberately unpolished—'half-baked patriots,' 'criticisin' chaps'—matching the persona of a plainspoken serviceman. This technique extends to the use of dialect and occupational slang, as in 'The 'Skeeter Fleet' or 'The Penguin Driver,' where the title itself hints at a specialized, slightly absurd job. The effect is a gallery of types rather than individuals, each defined by a single role or attitude.

Movement Between War and Home

The collection repeatedly shifts scenes from the front to domestic settings, often within a single poem. 'Her Johnny' imagines a woman at home reading a letter, while 'The First Fleet' describes ships departing. In 'Behind the Lines,' the speaker contrasts the soldier's experience with the civilian's ignorance. The second section, 'In Other Keys,' moves entirely away from war, offering love lyrics, nature poems, and humorous sketches—'The Bold Lover,' 'The Dog Confesses,' 'Br'er Rabbit in de Bresh Pile.' This structural pivot suggests that the war context is a frame rather than the sole subject. The romantic poems, such as 'We Rode at Night,' use a different, more lyrical register: 'We rode at night, and the cut-steel stars / Daggered the black of the quiet sky.' The juxtaposition of martial and pastoral imagery recurs throughout.

Recurring Images: Colors, Dawn, and the Unfinished

Certain images thread through both sections. The flag appears not only in the opening poem but also in 'Loyalty' and 'An American Creed,' where it is described as 'something that represents freedom.' Dawn and dusk recur as moments of transition: 'The radiant dawn flows up the empty sky' in 'Unfinished,' and later 'at the edge of dusk my love for you / Would speak.' The motif of incompleteness—unfinished morning, unfinished song, unfinished love—ties the war poems to the romantic ones. In 'Paid in Advance,' a day in spring is earned by 'gloomy days' endured with 'a shrug and a smile,' a logic of compensation that echoes the soldier's sacrifice. The physical scars of war appear obliquely: in 'We Rode at Night,' the speaker notes 'the scar is still there / On the brave little hand,' a mark that outlasts the passion.

Verse Forms and Rhythmic Variation

Appleton employs a range of metrical patterns, from the loose iambic tetrameter of 'The Colors' to the more regular ballad stanzas of 'We Rode at Night.' The poems often use couplets or alternating rhymes, but the line lengths vary: short, punchy lines in 'Beans' contrast with the longer, more meditative lines of 'Unfinished.' The collection also includes dialect poems like 'Br'er Rabbit in de Bresh Pile,' which adopts a Southern African American vernacular, and 'The Small Boy Explains,' which mimics a child's voice. This variety in form and register suggests an attempt to capture the diversity of American speech. The second section's shift to more conventional lyric forms—sonnets, quatrains—further distinguishes the home-front poems from the rougher service verses.

Readers approaching With the Colors will find a collection that resists easy categorization: part war poetry, part character sketch, part love lyric. The poems reward attention to their shifting speakers and the recurring motifs that link the two sections. Appleton's use of colloquial diction and varied verse forms gives the book a documentary quality, even as the romantic poems in 'In Other Keys' offer a counterpoint. The collection is best read as a series of snapshots rather than a unified narrative, each poem contributing to a mosaic of American voices in 1917.

That rainy afternoon, Appleton’s soldier voices lingered—homesick, wry, tender—until a footnote mentioned Australian diggers singing their own rough verses. I put the book down, curious, and found The Old Bush Songs — Themes and Context beside it. Same yearning, different dust. The rain kept falling, and I just listened.