Some school board SHOULD have made our teachers swap out that stupid Watermelon Pickle book for maybe some Milton or Donne. I can barely name any real poets because we did "Language Arts" instead. The next time I hit poetry was in college, where they stuck me (and the rest of the Electronics students, it was the only section that fit our schedule) with Sylvia Plath. I never did figure out why she called a poem about a dead snake "Medallion."
That's probably why I care so much about kids getting GOOD stuff to read, not whatever fits the current trend. I think poetry and literature are probably as important as visual arts and I think I was gypped. Reading it long after school ended is not the same as being taught it.
I disliked the way that "literature" was taught so much, it took me some years after I started teaching (math) to read some of it.