Zora Neale Hurston's essay "High John de Conquer" is essential reading for understanding the John the Conqueror tradition, celebrating High John as the spirit of Black joy, resilience, and outwitting power that survived slavery's worst abuses; A poet writing about John the Conqueror might use the figure to explore the relationship between the High John root used in hoodoo practice and the folk hero himself, tracing how the spiritual practice embodies the legendary figure's qualities of protection, luck, and power; Sterling Brown's folk hero poems, particularly those about figures like John Henry and Stackolee, provide models for poetic engagement with the badman and hero traditions that John the Conqueror belongs to, combining vernacular language, ballad structure, and political insight; A student poet might write a contemporary John the Conqueror poem that places the folk hero in a present-day context, exploring how his particular qualities of wit, resilience, and joy-against-odds translate to the specific challenges facing Black communities now; The relationship between John the Conqueror and the trickster tradition is worth exploring in a poem that compares High John to Brer Rabbit and Anansi, tracing the common thread of intelligence, adaptability, and refusal to accept defeat that runs through these related figures; A contemporary poet might write about the commodification of hoodoo culture, exploring the difference between the living spiritual practice of working with the High John root in a community context and its appropriation as a novelty item sold in tourist shops, using John the Conqueror's own trickster qualities to comment on the irony