Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would suggest you do two things: first, while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it, teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition.

Keep everything in context, and try to have each line doing more than one thing - not just giving exposition but also revealing character and history, etc.

It is the thought, not the incidentals of expression, that essentially makes an exposition unpopular. A systematic ribbon and button maker can become unpopular but essentially is not at all, inasmuch as he does not mean much by the very odd things he says (alas, and this is a popular art!). Socrates, on the other hand, was the most unpopular in Greece because he said the same thing as the simplest person but meant infinitely much by it. To be able to stick to one thing, to stick to it with ethical passion and undauntedness of spirit, to see the intrinsic duplexity of this one thought with the same impartiality, and at one and the same time to see the most profound earnestness and the greatest jest, the deepest tragedy and highest comedy?this is unpopular in any age for anyone who has not realized that immediacy is over. But neither can what is essentially unpopular be learned by rote. More on that later.

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.

Besides the actual reading in class of many poems I would suggest you do two things: first while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition.

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.