Zibby is joined by two-time Pushcart Prize nominee Tara M. Stringfellow to discuss MAGIC ENUFF, an electrifying, glorious collection of poems that tells a universal tale of survival and revolution through the lens of Black femininity. Tara opens up about her identity as a Black woman and poet. She highlights specific poems, such as "Exodus," written in memory of Tyree Nichols, a Black artist from Memphis who was killed, and “This Woman,” which draws from her mother's experience of racial violence as a child during the Civil Rights Movement. Finally, she reflects on the success of MEMPHIS, which was a “Read With Jenna” pick.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Tara. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Magic Enough.

Tara: Well, thank you so much for having me. 

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. What a beautiful, powerful book of poems. My gosh. 

Tara: Thank you. 

Zibby: Yeah, you're a superstar. It's true. 

Tara: No, I appreciate it. I'm rather nervous for this collection to come out, so. 

Zibby: Oh, well, somewhere I read you say, you know, you're a, you're black and a woman and a poet and all of these things are true and you're just like leaning into this identity as well.

And I know it can be nerve wracking, but you know, it's part of you, right? 

Tara: Oh, no. I always tell folk I was born a poet. 

Zibby: Yeah. Well, there you go. 

So talk about. how this collection came to be and how you envisioned it at the outset or how did the poems become part of this collection? Tell me the whole story behind it, please.

Tara: Oh Lord, my agent sent me an email right after I had just turned in Memphis. I don't even know if Memphis had been published or not yet, but I just turned in the final draft. She sent me an email. She said, Hey, Don't you think it's high time this world saw some of your poetry? Say, ooh, right girl, you right.

So I got to work and I sent her a collection the following week and she said, oh wow, I didn't know you had such a whole book ready to go. I have a whole book and so then we got the book deal maybe even right before Memphis came out for the poetry book. So I mean, this collection is my life's work. Some of these poems I've been working on 15, 16, 20 years.

And I've been editing them over, over many, uh, a Saturday at some cafe, pouring over them. Many of the poems I wrote while I was studying for my MFA at Northwestern, so I graduated from there in 2017. So, yeah, this is, this is my life's work. This collection has been years, years in the making. I would say at least 15 years for some of, some of the poems, especially I think some of the Love Haiku.

I might have written some of them in college, right after college, so like 2008. Wow. Right. So, yeah, I've, I poured myself into these pages for sure. 

Zibby: So then aside from nervous, and how does it feel opening yourself up like this? 

Tara: How does it feel? Part of me feels like, wow, I am writing poetry. I have a book of poetry published by the biggest publisher in this land, by Peru.

In a country that was designed to enslave me, Phyllis Wheatley couldn't get any of her poems published here in America. And I said, wow, 250 years later, we've made a way. Phyllis Wheatley carved a way for us Black female poets to get our, our words to the masses and then part of me is very sad that it took that long.

Zibby: Mm hmm. 

Tara: You know, that it's taken all of my life to get this collection, to see the light of day. So part of me is very sad that I can't imagine the struggles for other Black writers to get their words across in a, in a mainstream way. And why is that? You know, why, why do I know them? So difficult. And you know, coupled with the fact that in my state of Tennessee, they're banning books left and right by Black women rioters, by queer rioters.

I'm very glad this collection is coming out right before the election, I do have to say. It's a political book, and I had something to say. So, I don't know, part of me feels really great, like how far we've come, and part of me feels like, ooh, we're regressing, you know, and the fact that Tennessee is banning so many, I mean, and not my state of Tennessee across the south.

Um, the fact that so many books are being banned, it's as if it's a tactic used by, you know, enslavers to keep my people silenced and without agency and in perpetual servitude. If we don't have access to libraries, to literature. So part of me feels very conflicted. It's like, it's been 250 years, but you know, a black child can't go to the library and check out a book by Alice Walker.

Who are we as a nation? 

Zibby: Yeah, it's hard to believe, honestly, what's going on. It's just unfathomable, um, in so many ways. Can I read part of, only read from Exodus, one of your poems? Yeah. I mean, I'm probably, you'll probably laugh as I try to read this, but. I mean in my voice. But anyway, we've cradled enough bodies of men we love, bleeding out onto uncaring streets, learned to roll my hair with funeral programs, climbed into sheets that may shroud my children, black rituals, Emmett Till was my Peter Rabbit, my mama only read from Exodus.

I am the Lord thy God, which hath brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. I wonder what most Egyptians thought when the Jews cried with locusts and plagues and blood that their lives mattered. My father pulls from McCool not a damn thing, he exhales. Backing out the drive, my mama comes running, gasping.

You'll need this, she says, unfolds one long pearl rosary. 

Tara: Wow. I wrote that for Tyree Nichols, who was killed years ago here in Memphis, beaten to death, trying to get to his mama's driveway, you know, so I, I called my mother when it happened, when Tyree was killed here in Memphis. And I said, what do we do now?

And she said, I'll never forget that. She says, and in time, in times of extreme sorrow, we pray. And in times of extreme joy, we pray. And so I sat down, I was so angry. I didn't know what to do with my, with my rage that this beautiful black artists from Memphis was beaten to death for what over, you know, for what traffic violate a traffic stop.

You got to be kidding me. This is an artist. This is a black man. Uh, he was a photographer here in Memphis. Um, and he was just driving home from taking pictures of a sunset from Shelby Farms. It's uh, where I walk my dog here in Memphis. So yeah, I had to write something for him. I felt as if his life deserved the best words I could come up with, at the very least.

That man deserved a good poem. That's where that came out of. Like, what do we do when all these Black men and children are being gunned down or beaten to death? You know, for just being who they are, existing in this world. Well, yeah, that's, that's the poem that came out of it and of course I wanted to make a parallel to the Jews and it's so telling that, uh, since October 7th, there's been a genocide in Gaza and it's like, wow, is, are we not understanding that history is repeating itself?

That if you oppress the people for, for years, for generations, based on their race, based on their religion, based on their ethnicity, it's not going to bode well. Like, it's like, no one, no one listening. I don't get it. Oh, well, but I think it's the job of us poets to point out when the world isn't listening.

You know, I think that is the role of a good poet to say, yes, this place is beautiful. This world is beautiful, but we could do a lot better. And so I think that's the message of this poem. Like we could do a lot better to Black men in this country. 

Zibby: Wow. That's beautiful.

Tara: Thank you. 

Zibby: Can we talk about one more called This Woman?

Oh, yes. Oh, I love that one. That's a good one. 

Tara: Okay. This Woman. 

Zibby: Do you want me to read it? Do you want to read it? I feel like Do you mind me reading it? 

Tara: I don't have it actually in front of me, so go ahead. I don't think I remember this one by heart. 

Zibby: Okay, I'll read it. My mother was 10 when she got her first black eye.

Some white man at the counter of a North Memphis deli fixed her with a square jab that sent her flying off her stool, ketchup adorning her mother's head in a blood crown. My mother was inconceivably calm among the chicken bones on the floor, still as a stone wall, mustard in her hair. While White screamed at her to go back to the Memphis Zoo.

She knelt there on her hands and knees and tried to breathe. Fought the blackness seeping into her vision. The dizziness trying to overtake her. She said she mouthed the Lord's Prayer. This woman asks me for anything, anything at all. I give it. Oof. 

Tara: My mom grew up, well, my mom's from Memphis and she grew up going to sit ins with her mother.

She'd take, I can't imagine as a child, as a 10 year old child, sitting down at a counter in the South and having grown people, these are adults. Grown white folk, you know, hurl things at them, throw things at them, curse at them, they're children. And it boggles the mind, really, to think about that children were going through this.

And then when I came to this country, because I grew up in Okinawa, I came to this country when I was six or seven. about to turn seven, and the insults I would hear, you know, when going to my, you know, Italian Catholic school. I was like, y'all know I'm a child. Does that not factor in at all? Like, I always knew I was Black, but I didn't understand that that meant I could be unwanted.

Until I came to this country and I said, wow, wow. And so, yeah, that poem is just generations of, of tiny black girls trying to just, just exist in this world. And the insults that we've sustained from doing that is, It's incredible to me. And yeah, we're still here in this country. We still love it. 

Zibby: I know. I was going to say, like, if I were you, I would have like, been like, uh, where's my ticket back to Okinawa?

Tara: Right. I did. I said, we can't. I said, listen.

We can't stay here. These people are crazy. They're trying to kill us. And the food isn't as good. We could be in Okinawa walking around in silk kimonos, you know, eating udon and get work here with less people and get work here. But I, I don't know why, but I love this country. This is my homeland. My ancestors made it.

So why would I leave and go anywhere else? Part of it is very much like that. You know, we, it's our duty to make this country better. So I guess that's what I'm trying to do with this little collection. We'll see what happens. 

Zibby: Wow. Wait, so tell me about the experience publishing Memphis and being a Jenna's pick and all of that whole stuff.

How has that changed your life? 

Tara: Oh, goodness. I mean, I write full time. You know, that was always my dream since I was three years old to be a poet, to be a working writer, to just do that as a job. I've always had to have like other jobs to fund my writing and to be able to, I quit my job as a teacher when I got the book deal.

I didn't have to financially work anymore. I could just work on writing. And so that, Has changed my life. And I mean, wow, I'm in the middle of a second novel now because I have time and I can write and it's just a beautiful experience. And I'd have to think, I mean, of course, read with Jenna, but also the women in the city in my Memphis, they really put me on the map.

It was the most bought book in this city in like 2022. I think I outsold Diary of a Wimpy Kid. I said, And it's beautiful. Like I'll go around the city. I was out at the Memphis chess club downtown like a week or so ago. And I ran into a woman. I was like, Hey, you want me to sign your book? She was just sitting down reading it.

She was like, what you're here. Yeah, I mean, like I live here and that's amazing to see to be in the city and I'll get recognized now and women will just start crying. They're like, Oh my God, it's you. Like, I can't believe the support that women of all races have shown me. And so that's amazing. That's a fantastic, I'm still kind of wrapping my head around it.

It's surreal. Like, I walked into a bookstore and these two women just started jumping up and down. I looked behind me, I was like, is Beyonce? I was like, what? Stop. It's like, not me. What are you talking about? Why are you excited that I'm here? So that, that is a beautiful gift and blessing in my life, that so many women are so excited to, I get invited to parties now.

Oh my god. People come to me at their events. That's crazy. As a poet, as a, you know, an introvert, you know, I'm fine by sitting by a fire with my dog until the world ends. So it's so weird that people like want me out and like want a photo with me. I know. These crazy people. It tickles me to no end. It tickles me.

Zibby: Oh my gosh, I love that. Can you talk about what your next book is about? The new novel? 

Tara: No. I'm not gonna say anything. Okay, all right. But I'm writing, I think it's

I don't know. I hope she's okay. I think she, I think I'm doing okay. I don't know. Who knows? I'm only halfway through her, but there's things happening in her. I don't know. We'll just see what I have no idea. I have no clue. Y'all pray for me to finish this second novel. I don't know what I'm doing. We'll see.

Zibby: I mean, I don't think anyone ever feels like they know what they're doing. So I feel like you're in good company. Right. Hopefully. Unless you really don't. No, I'm kidding. 

Tara: Waste is down to right. I'm like, let's just have fun and see what, where this page takes me. But for me, give me some strength to finish this 

Zibby: Well, do you have any advice for aspiring authors, perhaps not to inspire them to write their second novels?

Because now we know how hard that is, but

Tara: And I'm like, why aren't I a dentist? He's like, no, you can't, Tara. You've got to do this. I said, okay, no, but the best writing advice I've ever received, and it was the most infuriating advice too, was from Ta Nehisi Coates. I saw him at Northwestern, and I said, you know, I just love you. I just want to, like, live in your aura and, like, follow you around, like, on your, like, a tiny little, like, demon on your shoulder.

And he's like, okay, well, don't do that. And I was like, what? That was it. He said, just keep writing. And I was writing Memphis at the time when I met him. Uh, and it took me a few more years to finish it. I was getting my MFA when I met him, probably like 2016. It took me to 2020 to finish a draft of the book.

So it took me some years, but I followed his advice. I just kept writing. So that is my advice to all aspiring writers out there. Just keep writing. I know it's infuriating. I know it's frustrating. You do not get into this business. Lord knows for the money or immediate fame. I've been doing three, I'm 38 and I'm finally having my poetry published by a major press.

So it's taken me some time, but just keep writing. Something will break. You know, you might be 38 when something breaks for you. You might be 48. You might be 28, you might be lucky and do it early, but for most people it takes a lifetime. And so I say love it, love poetry and prose that much, that you would give, devote your entire life to it.

Without ever seeing a cent. That's how much you have to love it. Do it just for the creation of the art itself. And if you can get to that point where you do it just for the love and joy of adding to the western canon, of trying to elevate the art form in some small individual way, then the success, the fame, hopefully some money, will come.

But please don't do it for that. Don't do it to yourself to be a big name in this industry. You'll never get anywhere. Do it for the love of the, the poem on the page and just keep writing and something will break.

Zibby: I love that. Tara, thank you so much. This has been wonderful and I'm wishing you all the best on this collection.

So beautiful. Congratulations. 

Tara: Thank you so much. 

Zibby: Okay. Bye. Bye.