Review: The Poet X (by Elizabeth Acevedo)

My Rating: 5 stars

**After watching (and hearing) Elizabeth Acevedo perform a segment from her book during an author chat after I read the book, I was absolutely blown away!  That performance gave me a new appreciation for this story and so I am changing my rating to 5 stars (from 4.5).**

I’ve never been much of a poetry reader.  Nothing against the form or anything, I just have a difficult time getting into poetry, for some reason. Perhaps it’s because my brain processes poetry and poetic verses differently than it does regular prose and as a result, I often have to exert much more effort in reading/re-reading (usually multiple times) poetry in order to fully grasp its meanings. The experience overall can be exhausting and draining for me, which is why, when it comes to leisure reading, I tend to avoid poetry.  This is also why, despite being an avid reader for most of my life and having read countless books over the decades, I had never read a novel-in-verse before, as I’ve always considered it a form of poetry and would likely struggle with it.  Given the above, I was understandably apprehensive when I found out that the group read for one of my book clubs this month would be renowned slam poet Elizabeth Acevedo’s debut novel-in-verse from 2018, The Poet X.   Even though I had heard so many wonderful things about Acevedo and her works, I didn’t know how I would take to a reading experience that, up to this point, was largely foreign to me. (As if that weren’t enough, this book also falls into the YA category, which I don’t read much nowadays, since I’m not the audience for it).   With all that said, I’m actually more surprised than anyone that I ended up enjoying this one so much more than I expected.

Xiomara Batista is the titular Poet X, a teenager who immigrated with her family from the Dominican Republic and now lives in Harlem with her parents and twin brother Xavier.  As she leaves adolescence and starts to come into her own, Xiomara struggles with trying to make sense of the world and her role in it.  In doing so, Xiomara encounters one obstacle after another – at school, she struggles with fitting in, which became more challenging after her body “started taking up more room than [her] voice” and consequently being the target of either affection from boys or jealous gossip from girls.  At home, Xiomara has a strained relationship with her parents – her father ignores her and her mother, who is fiercely religious, sees Xiomara as nothing but trouble and so enforces strict adherence to the laws of her church as a means of keeping her daughter from straying.  At the same time, Xiomara is also dealing with issues of the heart, as she starts to develop feelings for a boy in her biology class and becomes confused at the conflicting emotions raging with her.  Xiomara has a lot she wants to say, but feeling unheard, she has no choice but to pour all her frustrations into the pages of her notebook, in the form of poems that become a salve for her soul.  Through these poems, Xiomara is able to articulate every thought, feeling, desire, that she does not dare express out loud to a world that refuses to listen.  When she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club, Xiomara is deeply conflicted, as she doesn’t know how she could ever speak the words from her notebook out loud, plus her mother would never let her attend anyway. With some encouragement along the way, Xiomara finally takes a step toward performing her poems, but the implications are severe, especially the visceral reaction from her mother, which threatens to destroy everything, including the little bit of self-worth she had worked so hard to gain.

Xiomara is one of those wonderfully drawn characters who, once you meet her, is very hard for you to forget her.  This is especially true when you have such a talented author as Elizabeth Acevedo at the helm, with her lyrical, poetic words beautifully giving voice to Xiomara, but in a way that is completely accessible, which I love.  For my first time reading a novel-in-verse, I’m so glad I got to start with Acevedo’s work!  Instead of struggling with this as I usually would if I were reading traditional poetry, I actually flew through this and finished in one sitting – though I did feel a bit sad afterwards because I was so immersed in the story and didn’t want it to end.

Overall, this was a different experience for me, but an absolutely incredible one. If, like me, you are looking to try a novel-in-verse for the first time, I highly recommend this immensely moving, heartfelt coming of age tale that is beautifully told in a powerful and unforgettable voice.  Acevedo’s talent definitely shines through and now I can’t wait to read her two subsequent works (also novels-in-verse), With the Fire on High (which came out in 2019) and her newest release Clap When You Land (which came out in May of this year) as well as whatever she decides to write next of course!