Hey! Yes, I googled it and the poem I'm remembering was Langston Hughes. As modern as it got for poetry and us in high school. :P Good guess.

We did some poems in elementary school, some of which I can still recite, but only a few that I remember, all of which were printed out on handouts, and my impression was that they were ad hoc selections made on the basis of the teacher liking them. (A variant on "Ladles and Jellyspoons", for example.) I don't remember anything as formal as reading poetry in a reader (short stories and novellas, yes). Though I do remember carrying really thick hardcover readers that weighed almost as much as I did :P, so surely there was some poetry in there??