Tara M. Stringfellow’s “Magic Enuff” casts a spell.

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The first time I interviewed author and former attorney Tara M. Stringfellow, she told me that after her now-bestselling debut novel Memphis was published (in 2022 by Penguin Random House), she planned to release a poetry collection.

At the time, having just finished reading Stringfellow’s fiction debut — a tour de force — I expected her editor or agent to talk her out of a poetic pivot. The New York Times called Memphis a “rhapsodic hymn to Black women”; the novel was the Today show’s book club pick; and it was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. The Center for Fiction called Memphis spellbinding and “a triumphant ode to the power of art.” In short, Stringfellow’s powerful story and unique authorial voice earned her debut novel the kind of attention and acclaim that’s usually reserved for established writers. Why move to poetry — not known for generating book sales — when one’s prose is such a proven success?

The reader can probably guess where that little anecdote leads. Stringfellow’s poetry collection Magic Enuff (The Dial Press) was published on June 25, just two years after her debut novel, and it is a triumph.

Oh, and the reader has no cause for alarm — though she has enjoyed this foray into poetry, Stringfellow told me this spring that she was hard at work on her next novel.

Pros & Cons; Poetry & Prose

Perhaps “foray” is the wrong word. The author’s first major published work was, yes, a novel, true, but she has written — and published — poetry for years. In fact, many of the poems included in Magic Enuff are pieces that Stringfellow has lovingly edited and re-edited for years, like a well-tended garden. She has worked on some of the poems for up to 15 years.

“You can rework a poem for 20 or 30 years,” she tells me. “That’s why it may be my favorite artform.” She continues, “I never thought these poems would see the light of day. I wrote them mostly for myself.” As such, the works on display in Magic Enuff are unguarded in the extreme.

“I see poetry as a form of protest,” Stringfellow says, “as my own revolutionary way to get out my anger at the injustices this country deals Black folks — it’s a way of channeling my rage.” — Tara M. Stringfellow

Another difference between poetry and prose — besides the page count, usually, and the amount of blank space on a given page — is the intimacy of poetry. Where a novel requires some conflict, characters, and even the most basic of plots, poetry can be much more free-form, and so, correspondingly more vulnerable for its author.

“Memphis was based on my childhood, but it had a narrative voice. I had a narrator. Even Joan in the first person isn’t me,” Stringfellow says. Her poetry, on the other hand? “It’s like journal entries. I’m telling really personal stories about my life, but I think it’s in the same vein as Memphis, thematically.”

That theme is one of survival and resistance.

A Form of Protest

Stringfellow’s work, both her novel and her new collection of poems, tends to deal with her personal and family history. The work certainly intersects with and comments on the world at large, though.

“I think my writing really centers on Black, Southern womanhood,” Stringfellow muses, “so the poems do, too,” even though some are set in Chicago and Okinawa. And where some authors might confess that their focus rarely strays beyond middle age or childhood, Stringfellow’s work touches on childhood, adolescence, and beyond. Her work deals not only with herself, but with her mother, grandmother, sister, and friends.

In making her focus Black Southern women, Stringfellow has been forced to accept the burdens of writing about a struggle for freedom and agency that goes back generations and continues, albeit in an altered state, to this day. Her poetry is a celebration, but it is more than that.

“I see poetry as a form of protest,” Stringfellow says, “as my own revolutionary way to get out my anger at the injustices this country deals Black folks — it’s a way of channeling my rage.”

In one poem, “I Dreamt the KKK Were in My Living Room,” that rage is palpable. “I had made everyone lemonade,” she writes, before listing an absurd and surreal litany, then finally concludes with, “I poisoned y’all lemonade.”

The poem is a strange delight. On the surface it’s quite simple, but even in this short piece, Stringfellow constructs multiple layers. The surreal situation — of making small talk with neighbors who want you dead — pays homage to the lived experience of generations of Black Americans who knew the identities of their persecutors but were powerless to do anything about them. Her execution is flawless, and her mastery allows the reader to focus on the author’s subject matter rather than her skill.

Indeed, though Stringfellow rages against injustices small and large, there is more at work in the collection than justified anger. There is undeniable emotional weight to her words, a rushing undercurrent of a river of raw pain and sadness and fear. So, too, is there joy, pride, and beauty. Poetry has power, Stringfellow reminds me. “We no longer use mustard gas, likely because of T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland,” she says.

What other changes might be wrought by those who are inspired by Stringfellow’s words, who carry for a moment the weight of her emotions? It’s a responsibility, but one for which she is prepared. “I think about the fact that a few hundred years ago I would have been executed just for holding a book, let alone writing a book,” she says. That awareness of history has informed Magic Enuff, and it’s clear that the author set out to create something lasting and worthy.

Love and Magic

Unsurprisingly, given the name, magic is a motif of the collection, Stringfellow tells me. Indeed, from transformation to the cosmic to the timeless to simple spells bound by a comb buried in the clay, the otherworldly haunts the pages of Magic Enuff.

In some poems, magic is a thread that connects Black women through the ages. In others, magic is a last-ditch effort, a desperate plea to change an unyielding world. Sometimes it’s an outburst of exultant joy, of beautiful life, thriving in spite of harsh circumstances. Finally, magic can be the simple conjuration of making dinner for the man you love, of transforming disparate ingredients into a delicious meal, of transforming a room into a home. The author tells me that cooking dinner for a loved one can be an example of the most ancient and powerful magic. And it can give people hope.

In this way, Stringfellow expertly weaves in a thread of everyday into the tapestry that is Magic Enuff, and even alongside such poems as “I Dreamt the KKK Were in My Living Room” or “For Trayvon’s Mother,” the love poems and poems about lost loves fit perfectly, because they too are about a different kind of magic.

“Black women,” she says, “have done everything since we got here in chains to make [America] great, make it beautiful, make it magical.”

With her new collection Magic Enuff, Stringfellow has made the world a bit more magical.