The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

Bibliography

Acevedo, Elizabeth. The Poet X. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2020. ISBN 9780780436404

Summary

Xiomara, an Afro-Latina teen living in Harlem, discovers her passion for slam poetry after being invited to join her school’s club. Unfortunately, her very religious Mami is unlikely to support Xiomara’s poetry, especially when it interferes with her confirmation classes at church. Readers will love this honest, sharp coming of age story. 

Analysis

Elizabeth Acevedo has written a novel in verse that will capture readers from the first poem, Stoop-Sitting, where she describes a day of freedom before her mother arrives home from work. Acevedo has the ability to capture the essence of the teens years, grasping for freedom and becoming your own person, and she does it with musical language. Acevedo uses apt similes and metaphors such “her eyes like bright lampposts shining on my face” and “the intense makes bow tie pasta of my belly/ That all the lit candles beckon like fingers/ that want to clutch around my throat”. Her main character, Xiomara, is an Afro-Latina teen whose relationship with her devout catholic mother is tumultuous. While Xiomara struggles with her own religious beliefs and the relationship with her mother, she is discovering herself and her first loves: poetry and Aman. After her teacher shows them a video of a stand up poet, her poem reads “but instead of raising my hand I press it against my heart/ and will the chills on my arms to smooth out”. Throughout the book, Xiomara has poems that she writes for class, but it is not the paper she turns in, which appears on the next page. The poems she writes are raw and beautiful, and at the very end of the book, the last poem is titled Assignment 5--First and Final Draft as Xiomara finally finds her voice and shares it freely. 

Sample Poem

In Translation

My mouth cannot write you a white flag,

it will never be a Bible verse.

My mouth cannot be shaped into the apology

you say both you and God deserve.

And you want to make it seem

it’s my mouth’s entire fault.

Because it was hungry,

and silent, but what about your mouth?

How your lips are staples

that pierce me quick and hard.

And the words I never say

are better left on my tongue

since they would only have slammed

against the closed door of you back.

Your silence furnishes a dark house.

But even at the risk of burning,

the moth always seeks the light. 

Activities

Use this book for a book talk and/or a mentor text for spoken word poetry. Introduce the book and author to students. Watch the author’s reading of the poem here: https://youtu.be/kfsWw2BY2Fo . Ask students what they liked about the poem and the author’s reading. Acevedo is a great example of the rhythms of spoken word poetry because she is a spoken word poet.