Though I am an old, straight, somewhat offbeat, off-white guy who may not identify with the identities or the psychology or technology of current high school students, I was once a high school student myself, and I remember discovering in my junior year the poems of William Wordsworth and being enchanted by their lyricism, which to me was almost as catchy as Smokey Robinson’s. Wordsworth, in his formal and linguistic simplicity, also leads directly to Hank Williams, Chuck Berry, Leonard Cohen and other rhythmic rhymesters without whom there is no hip-hop. So for me it is only natural to want to introduce young people to some of the origins of current pop culture in the literary history of song.

If I were a high school English teacher, one assignment of mine would be to select a poem, from a mini-anthology I would assemble representing a range of diverse forms and traditions, and to transcribe it by hand, on paper, memorize it and recite it to the class — a poetry “slam” where self-expression is not in the original composition but in the performance of the text. I would encourage the performers to pay attention to how the words sound and how they taste, and not to overdramatize but to let the music and the meaning of the language give you implicit stage directions to modulate your reading of the tone.

For some students this might be terrifying — public speaking is said to be among the most common phobias — but facing one’s fears is one way to overcome them. (James Earl Jones overcame a debilitating stutter by reciting poetry aloud in high school.) Others would surely jump at the chance to develop their speaking chops in front of an audience. And even the most reserved might find in their chosen poem a friend and companion that stays with them for life.

I started writing verse for fun when I was about 7, got more serious after discovering the English Romantics at 16, published my first poem at 20 and have been in the poetry business ever since. As a battle-scarred veteran of those dreamy fields I’ve come to know the game all too well, and by now have a rather jaded take on the scene — or rather the proliferation of scenes, from open mics and online free-for-alls to professionalized MFA programs and New York publishing ecosystems — and must confess to a certain disenchantment with current conditions in poetry land. But poetry itself has never let me down.

In elementary school I was made to memorize poems (“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, / Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, / Stand like druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic”) and such antique lines as these from Longfellow come back to me effortlessly. But the ones I remember best are those I’ve read so many times that they just stuck in my head like songs heard again and again on the radio: the birthday odes of Dylan Thomas (powerfully reinforced by his recordings); “Lapis Lazuli” by William Butler Yeats (timelessly contemporary even with its “hysterical women” and its “poets that are always gay”; the sonnets of Gerard Manley Hopkins (whose syncopated rhythms and torqued sounds still astound me), among others, have kept me company on long drives or walks, or while doing household chores, and every time I say them aloud I’m reminded of the uplift baked into great poems.

I would hope that a few of my hypothetical high-schoolers, if they could tear themselves away from their devices long enough, would discover the pleasures of speaking precisely and musically, and would keep a few poems in their hearts and heads for special occasions, and would carry what they’ve learned about language into their grown-up personal and professional lives, whatever their discipline. In my imaginary pedagogical world I’d like my students to remember me as the teacher who taught them to find in poetry the structures of expression that, once learned, stay with you and subconsciously continue to inform whatever you have to say.

Stephen Kessler’s column appears on Saturdays.