Here’s a good interview with John Hollander, an accomplished poet and professor, for those interested in understanding and teaching the poets and poetry. Excerpt:
Q: In terms of educational practice, what ways can a teacher, perhaps an elementary school or high school teacher, make good poetry exciting and accessible?
John Hollander: First of all, the teacher has to know and feel what poetry is, and be able—and this is crucial—to read it aloud effectively. Then, he or she can have students memorize excellent short poems and passages from longer ones, starting with set pieces from Shakespeare; for example, a Shakespeare sonnet or two. When the student recites the poem aloud in class, the teacher should comment on the intonation pattern, and the way in which the student may or may not have spoken the language meaningfully. Introduce students even in elementary school to the close reading of short poems—and, indeed, of passages of great prose. Every good teacher has his or her own way of bringing students’ own limited but diverse experience of the world to bear on a text speaking of and from beyond it: but the rotten American educational system’s obsessions with methodology don’t acknowledge this, and tend among other things to stifle originality in teachers. The way good teachers can get a handful of students (there’ll probably not be any more than that) to possess themselves of something in poetry is in a way as creative and imaginative act as writing poems themselves.
Though Hollander is addressing teaching in a school setting, note his “lament” that only a handful will actually learn and appreciate poetry. The answer is that real learning for any sort of a perception based subject requires very small classes – mentoring, relationships, eye-to-eye contact between master and student. Again, the home is where real learning is apt to take place. A loving parent with his “handful” of precious students, where 100% “possess themselves of something in poetry”. Hollander’s article is good for the homeschool parent, but leads to frustration for the institutional teacher who is overwhelmed by the 20 or 30 students who cannot possibly interact together with the beauty of art.