Taking a trip on the T Train

I tried to sell my students tickets for the T train this morning--the train toward Transcendence--but I found few takers. Boarding now on the American Lit Survey platform, step inside A.R. Ammons's "Garbage" for a contemplative journey past a towering garbage dump and on to a different type of landfill:       

                                        there is a mound, 

too, in the poet's mind dead language is hauled
off to and burned down on, the energy held and

shaped into new turns and clusters...

I'm reading this out loud with great enthusiasm and I look up expecting to see some light dawning on students' faces but I see nothing, nothing but incomprehension and boredom. I want the students to feel the way a poem can transforms dead language into new life and move us

        far beyond these our wet cells,

right on up past our stories, the planets, moons,
and other bodies locally to the other end of the

the pole where matter's forms diffuse and
energy loses all means to express itself except

as spirit,

But they're not having it. Maybe it's a bit much to ask students to think about language as a landfill at 9:00 on a Friday morning, and I can't drag them kicking and screaming into the ineffable. Last call for the train to Transcendence--the doors are closing now! I'm manning the controls as the engine rumbles away so I can't see whether the T train is carrying any passengers.