VOCABULARY
VOCABULARY
Words, words, words, and more words. It is the lumber from which we will craft our poems. If we select poor lumber, even if we are very good at our craft, our end product will be rickety and may collapse.
If I say something is "red", you begin to form a picture in your mind's eye, but if I say it is "vermillion", well that is something else entirely. It is not that the color described is necessarily more accurate, but that the sound of "vermillion" is in and of itself more resplendent in both its sound in your ear and the feel in your mouth.
Each individual poem will have its own lexicon, a subset of the poet's vocabulary, thus the larger the vocabulary of the poet, the more specific and exacting each poem's lexicon may be. My first piece of advice to aspiring poets is this: Learn new words constantly. Set a goal to learn two or three new words every day.
The fact is, poets need to use a more formal tone when writing, even if they opt to use conversational language and to do that, they need to tap into a richer vocabulary. And using the right words makes you a more effective communicator.
One way to improve your vocabulary is to become a voracious reader, and if you find yourself stumbling across a new word in your reading, first try to guess its meaning from the context, and then look it up. Finally, try to use the word several times in the ensuing weeks to reinforce your memory and comprehension of the word.
Another way to improve your vocabulary is to subscribe to two or three of the following Word-A-Day feeds:
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