Tweetspeak Poetry

  • Home
  • FREE prompts
  • Earth Song
  • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Books, Etc.
  • Patron Love

Children’s Book Club: ‘The Poet X’ by Elizabeth Acevedo

By Megan Willome Leave a Comment

spoken word poetry

Mrs. Galiano’s Sticky Note on Top of Assignment 1

Xiomara,

Although you say you’re only “dressing your thoughts in poems,” I’ve found several of your assignments quite poetic. I wonder why you don’t consider yourself a poet?

Why indeed? Xiomara is a poet—The Poet X—but it will take the entire book to discover herself … one poem at a time.Elizabeth Acevedo

The Poet X is built around five assignments in a high school English class:

1. Write about the most impactful day of your life.
2. Last paragraph of My Autobiography.
3. Describe someone you consider misunderstood by society.
4. When was the last time you felt free?
5. Explain your favorite quote.

Xiomara Batista, age 15, writes two versions of most of these assignments — a poem (which she does not turn in) and a short essay (which she does). For assignment 4, she writes two poems before finding her way to a completed essay. For the last assignment — which comprises the last two pages of the book — the first and final draft are the same.

Like Jaqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming and like The Crossover by Kwame Alexander, The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo is a novel composed of poems. That technique has become my favorite way to receive a story. While Woodson’s book is about an elementary-age girl and Alexander’s is about middle school twin boys, Acevedo’s story is about a girl who is in with a high school, and accordingly, it’s for an older audience.

The Poet X won the 2018 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature along with the Michael L. Printz Award and the Pura Belpré Award. Acevedo has gone on to write With the Fire on High, and Clap When You Land releases this month.

Like her heroine, Acevedo found herself in spoken word poetry — she is a National Poetry Slam Champion. The first time Xiomara hears this poetic form, in “Spoken Word,” she says, “I don’t breathe for the entire three minutes.” Listen to this recording of Acevedo read the first few poems of the book, and see if you don’t hold your breath as well.

Since this is a book about a young woman becoming a poet, it is composed of different types of poems. “Ants,” smack in the middle of the book, looks unlike any of the others, written in diagonal lines that look like ant trails and extend across four pages.

There are not many haiku in the book, but I gravitate toward them. This one plays off Emily Dickinson’s “Hope” is the thing with feathers:

Hope Is a Thing with Wings

Although I doubt it,
hope flies quick into
my body’s corners

These three lines tell us so much about Xiomara. She’s quick to doubt. The reference to her body’s corners addresses her tendency to fight with all four limbs to protect herself and her twin brother, Xavier, whom she calls Twin. The word “corners” also nods toward what it feels like to fall in love for the first time, as Xiomara does with a boy named Aman.

Here is the last stanza from one of her love poems about Aman titled “What I Didn’t Say to Caridad in Confirmation Class”:

He is not elegant enough for a sonnet,
too well-thought-out for a free write,
taking too much space in my thoughts
to ever be a haiku.

Her first sexual feelings are complicated by how Xiomara feels as a frequent target of the male gaze. Here is the first stanza of “How I Feel About Attention:”

If Medusa was Dominican
and had a daughter, I think I’d be her.
I look and feel like a myth.
A story distorted, waiting for others to stop
and stare.

Much of the novel concerns the conflict over Catholicism between Xiomara and her mother, Altagracia. The poem “Rumor Has It,” says Altagracia is a woman who hasn’t “ever forgiven Papi / for making her cheat on Jesus.” That’s because “the only man Mami wanted / was nailed to a cross.” That’s not what Xiomara wants, and yet the vocabulary of the church informs everything about this book. Even its divisions reflect biblical language: “Part I: In the Beginning Was the Word,” “Part II: And the Word Was Made Flesh,” “Part III: The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness.”

I can’t remember the last time I read a novel with such a genuine and heart-wrenching account of a family conflict that is both religious and personal. Altagracia and Xiomara both turn to Father Sean, who acts as intermediary, eventually helping them understand each other and rediscover their love. But the story doesn’t end in cliché; Xiomara neither becomes a nun nor swears off church forever. She’s too smart for either ditch. After all, she wants to know if the entire Bible is a poem.

In the final assignment, Assignment 5, we find Xiomara charting her own path forward. She knows who she is: Xiomara. Xio. The Poet X. Or just X. She contains multitudes. She speaks them with passion. She’s gonna be just fine.
_______________

The next Children’s Book Club will meet Friday, June 12. We’ll read The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Clement Hurd. In June we will also be learning a special summer poem from Brown for our monthly By Heart column, so stay tuned!

Margaret Wise Brown

 

Photo by hobvias sudoneighm, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome.

Browse more Children’s Book Club

rainbow crow front cover outlined
5 star

“Megan Willome has captured the essence of crow in this delightful children’s collection. Not only do the poems introduce the reader to the unusual habits and nature of this bird, but also different forms of poetry as well.”

—Michelle Ortega, poet and children’s speech pathologist

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Megan Willome
Megan Willome
Megan Willome is a writer, editor, and author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems and Rainbow Crow: poems in and out of form. Her day is incomplete without poetry, tea, and a walk in the dark.
Megan Willome
Latest posts by Megan Willome (see all)
  • Perspective: The Two, The Only: Calvin and Hobbes - December 16, 2022
  • Children’s Book Club: A Very Haunted Christmas - December 9, 2022
  • By Heart: ‘The night is darkening round me’ by Emily Brontë - December 2, 2022

Filed Under: A Story in Every Soul, book reviews, Children's Authors, Children's Book Club, Poets, Spoken Word Poems

Try Every Day Poems...

About Megan Willome

Megan Willome is a writer, editor, and author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems and Rainbow Crow: poems in and out of form. Her day is incomplete without poetry, tea, and a walk in the dark.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our May Menu

Patron Love

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world poetic.

The Graphic Novel

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

meet The Yellow Wallpaper characters

How to Write Poetry

Your Comments

  • Glynn on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Sandra Fox Murphy on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Glynn on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”
  • Bethany R. on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Stay in Touch With Us

Categories

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

Explore Work From Black Poets

About Us

  • • A Blessing for Writers
  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions
  • • The Write to Poetry

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poet-a-Day
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • 50 States Projects
  • • Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems Library
  • • Edgar Allan Poe Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2025 Tweetspeak Poetry · FAQ, Disclosure & Privacy Policy