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Imagery is the use of words that create vivid sensory experiences in the reader’s mind. It is the principal vehicle through which Elizabeth Kamara conveys the emotional and thematic weight of “New Tongue.” The poet relies on vivid sensory pictures of fire, water, cold, and storm to dramatise the loss of tradition and the human cost of cultural abandonment.
The poet’s first major image depicts the breakdown of family bonds in terms of fire. Ties of “family and friendship” are “loosened, broken, burnt.” Their remains are reduced to “ashes strewn into the bottomless sea.” This image is significant because fire connotes total, irreversible destruction. The choice of “bottomless” to describe the sea receiving these ashes reinforces this irrecoverability. Without doubt, the loss is seemingly without end or retrieval. This imagery sets the emotional register for the rest of the poem.
Also in the poem is the image of the sea, as evident in the run-on lines, “fishes swim by / careless of the loss.” Here, the poet extends the imagery of water beyond mere destruction to suggest an environment of total unconcern. The fish, untouched by the human tragedy occurring around them, mirror the indifference of the new generation itself. This image contributes to the poem’s meaning by suggesting that the loss of tradition occurs almost unnoticed, absorbed into the flow of life without protest or grief from those who caused it.
The poet intensifies her critique through imagery of cold and violent weather. The line “a strange coldness descending like snow covered mountain” introduces an atmosphere of emotional frost that has settled over relationships once warmed by communal closeness. This is reinforced by the image of “bathing at the back of the house / on a rainy July day,” which evokes exposure and discomfort rather than the safety traditional structures once provided. The poet then escalates this weather imagery into outright destruction: “gusts of wind falling trees” and “carting roofs away,” with skirts tugged and debris swirling in the air. These images of storm and upheaval suggest that the shift from tradition to modernity is a violent disruption; one that uproots and displaces, much as a storm uproots trees and tears away shelter.
Alongside these natural images, Kamara employs imagery centered on clothing and physical adornment to capture the artificiality of the new generation’s identity. “The borrowed shoes dance” and references to “borrowed minds” and a “borrowed tongue and culture” create a picture of people moving and thinking in garments and patterns that do not truly belong to them. This imagery contributes to the poem’s meaning by exposing the hollowness beneath the new generation’s apparent confidence. What looks like progress is, in image after image, shown to be imitation.
“New Tongue” closes with an image of permanent closure: “they hang the last lock on their culture / and glide into the future / without a backward glance.” The lock suggests a deliberate sealing away, an act of finality. When combined with the absence of a “backward glance,” this closing image leaves the reader with a stark visual conclusion that the new generation departs from its heritage without hesitation or regret.
In conclusion, the imagery in “New Tongue” builds a cumulative picture of cultural devastation. Each image reinforces the position that the embrace of modernity, when pursued without regard for one’s roots, results in loss, displacement, and a hollow, imitative identity.
Related:
- Q & A: Comment on the significance of the title “New Tongue” in Elizabeth Kamara’s poem
- Q & A: Identify and explain four poetic devices employed by Elizabeth Kamara in “New Tongue”
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