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Identify and explain four poetic devices employed by Elizabeth Kamara in “New Tongue”.
Elizabeth Kamara employs a range of poetic devices in “New Tongue” to dramatise the new generation’s abandonment of tradition and the resulting fragmentation of family and cultural identity. Four of the most significant devices are simile, personification, anaphora, and allusion.
1. Simile
Kamara uses simile to capture the emotional and social devastation caused by the rejection of tradition. In the line “a strange coldness descending like snow covered mountain,” the abandonment of communal warmth and family bonds is compared to the chilling, lifeless image of a snow-covered mountain. The comparison conveys an atmosphere of emotional frost and isolation that has settled over relationships once defined by closeness.
This simile works alongside another which evokes vulnerability and discomfort: “or like bathing at the back of the house / on a rainy July day”. In other words, this usage of simile usage gives us the sense that the new generation’s detachment from heritage leaves them, and those around them, exposed.
2. Personification
The poet personifies non-human elements to highlight human indifference. When she writes “as fishes swim by / careless of the loss,” the fish are imbued with a human capacity for “carelessness,” a trait properly belonging to people. She transfers this indifference onto fish swimming past the scattered ashes of broken family ties to intensify the sense of how thoroughly unmoved the world, and by extension, the new generation, has become towards the loss of tradition.
3. Anaphora
Anaphora is used extensively to emphasise the totality of what the new generation discards. The lines “careless of bonds / of family / of tradition / of heritage” repeat the preposition “of” before each value lost in order to build a cumulative, almost accusatory list.
Similarly, “every man / for himself / by himself / of himself” repeats “himself” across separate short lines to foreground the theme of individualism through both sound and structure.
4. Allusion
The poet also draws on a biblical allusion to elevate the scale of the generational rupture she describes. The line “their borrowed minds parted the red sea long ago” recalls the Old Testament story of Moses parting the Red Sea, an event of miraculous and historic proportions. She likens the new generation’s break from tradition to this iconic act of separation. She seems to suggest that their departure from heritage was decisive, dramatic, and, crucially, already long accomplished. From the moment onwards, there was little hope of return for estranged generation.
These four poetic devices work in concert to convey the poem’s central concern of a generation severed from its roots. A generation that moves forward with borrowed identities and has little regard for what has been irretrievably lost.
Related:
- Q & A: Discuss the central theme in “New Tongue” by Elizabeth Kamara
- Q & A: Comment on the significance of the title “New Tongue” in Elizabeth Kamara’s poem
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