I took an "introductory to poetry" class in college and our final exam was to recite a poem from memory. I took our book from class, opened it to a random page and chose Elizabeth Bishop's The Fish. I can still get about this far before failing reading it live:

  I caught a tremendous fish 
  and held him beside the boat 
  half out of water, with my 
  hook fast in a corner of his mouth. 
  He didn't fight.....

It was an intimidating experience for me, but a formative one.