Mikayla Leskey | Arts & Entertainment Editor
“The Poet X” by Elizabeth Acevedo has been sitting on my bookshelf for the past five years. I can’t even remember how I came into the possession of the book in the first place, whether it had been from an old teacher or a librarian, it was on my syllabus for my Young Adult Literature Class this semester. So along with all my other possessions, I packed that old coffee-stained book along with everything else when leaving for college.
It took a month, but this past week we finally had to read “The Poet X”. I wasn’t expecting to connect with the main character, Xiomara as quickly as I did. After all, we come from completely different backgrounds, yet the one thing we shared was being big-bodied and poets. Reading through her story was like reliving my adolescence in a way.
“The Poet X” takes you on a journey by reading the thoughts and poetry of a 15-year-old girl, who lives in Harlem, New York. You see how Xiomara lives and deals with her life and everything that gets thrown at her, from religious troubles to her home life. She’s a warrior at heart, known to fight all of her battles and her twin brothers’ too.
Throughout the novel, we watch as Xiomara questions her relationship with God and what God stands for, as well as her wanting to experience normal teenage things but feeling like she can’t because of her parents and her religion. So she goes behind their back, to see this boy, Aman, and falls in love with him.
But Xiomara’s story isn’t meant to be a love story between her and Aman, but a love story to herself. She learns to fall in love with herself and to be comfortable in her own mind throughout the pages and lines of this book. It’s something special to read as she figures herself out, and what she stands for.
As the title says, Xiomara is a poet, she’s never thought to share her poetry before, it was a thing she didn’t even expect that she could be able to do. Until her 10th-grade English teacher starts running a poetry club. It takes Xiomara almost three months to even attend, due to Communion class being at the same time. But when her priest tells her that maybe she isn’t ready for the class, and her teacher, Ms. Galiano asks Xiomara about it again, Xiomara decides to finally go, behind her mom’s back.
This is when Xiomara finds her place. Where things finally feel settled in her life, at least just a little bit. This is the first time she’s sharing her poetry with someone other than herself and Aman, and people love her words. Xiomara soon finds herself getting addicted to the idea of people loving her words, and more importantly, how her poetry can impact others.
As someone who wrote poetry all throughout high school and did slam poetry just like Xiomara, I find this portion of the book realistic. I always loved seeing how my poetry made others feel and my most important goal when I wrote was to leave an impact on my listeners. It was terrifying to perform but it also felt like nothing I had ever experienced before.
It’s always daunting to share your thoughts and words with the world, but you never know who else needs to hear the words that you’ve written. It’s inspiring to see people like you performing in a way you never thought was possible, and sometimes you will connect to that performer or their art in a way you never expected to.
“The Poet X” tells a tale of hope and betrayal and what it’s like to grow up as a 15-year-old girl. It’s important to read her thoughts to get an insight into what some teenagers nowadays experience. The book in itself is poetry, so it’s a quick read. Even though I’m a poet, and have been for many years, I’ve never liked to purposely pick up a poetry book. But since reading “The Poet X” my mind has been changed. You don’t need to love or write poetry to understand the medium, you just have to feel.