This study conceives poem as an art which operates in the reinvention of reality, allowing human beings to better understand themselves and the others; hence, the consideration of the creative and esthetic existence it is able to provide in school education. The study also detects the difficult relation slowly established between school and its use of poems, whether by means of an inappropriate selection of poem distortions or, when esthetically valid, transformed and disfigured by merely technical activities. In the 80s, the diffusion of the language conception as a means of verbal interaction caused a turn in the teaching of the Portuguese Language, affecting the country´s educational policy in the second half of the 90s, as seen in the National Standard Curriculum for the Portuguese Language (Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais de Língua Portuguesa) and in the National Program for the Didactic Book (Programa Nacional do Livro Didático), which mainly use the discourse genre theory as a reference for language work. Nevertheless, analyses done by several authors show that the changes caused by the language conception as a means of verbal interaction have brought forth very little change in the mistaken form in which poem is used in school. The didactic book is made mostly responsible for the inappropriate schoolarization that it offers, as well as the publishing market which circulates works which, from the esthetic point of view, are not so representative. Thus, this research was done in four schools in the city of Juiz de Fora, MG, each one part of different teaching districts (or units), involving 4th and 8th grades, with the objective of investigating the schoolarization of poem in Middle School classrooms, in two situations: in 4th and 8th grades in which the didactic book was not used, and in the same grades in which the book had been especially recommended by the MEC systematic evaluation, published in the Guia do Livro Didático (Didactic Book Guide). The critical paradigm was methodologically opted for, outlining the following investigation questions: How are the verbality/reading/writing practices developed in the Portuguese Language classes? How is poem inserted in these practices? How does the interaction with poems, provided by schools, allow children and adolescents to manifest their identity, to make choices, to express their views of the world? How does the presence or absence of the didactic book favor the esthetic experience of teachers and students with the poems? It was possible to detect satisfactory changes in the use of poems made by the school, helping emerge the esthetic experience and the manifestation of the children and the adolescent´s alterity. The value ascribed to poetic language is evident, a language which represents the other voice faced with the abundance of mass media discursive genres present in the classrooms and currently submitted, most of the times, to an erroneous schoolarization.