Conjure enters African American poetry through folk belief, ritual, roots, charms, spirits, and hidden knowledge. Poets use it to evoke cultural survival outside official religion, to honour African-derived practices, and to imagine language itself as a spell capable of protection, memory, and transformation.

Conjure introduces African diasporic spiritual traditions into African American poetry, often through imagery of ritual, healing, prophecy, ancestral contact, or protective power. It reflects folk belief systems that survived despite oppression and coexist alongside Christian influences in some literary traditions. Students should approach conjure not as mere superstition but as culturally meaningful symbolic language expressing survival, hidden knowledge, resistance, and alternative forms of spiritual authority.