One of the best ways to improve your vocabulary is to increase the amount and variety of your reading materials, to get exposure to the widest possible range of topics and thereby words associated with those topics, and their correct usage. You might not think that poetry would be particularly useful to you in this respect, but there are poems written on many topics as well, and the ways that the poets use their words will give you ideas on how to be creative with your own vocabulary in the future.

Poetry doesn’t have to rhyme, although most of the poems written prior to the 20th century tend to have a relatively regular rhyme and meter. By reading these poems, you can see how the poet adjusts the language, carefully selecting words that both match the rhyme scheme and convey the intended emotion and meaning. The care that poets take with their words continues into non-rhyming poems (“free verse”), where the rhythm of the poem comes both from the words used and the length of the lines.

Practice reading poetry out loud to help you develop a smooth and flowing speaking style. The underlying pulse of the phrases will assist you in moving your words forward. This will also help you learn to read more expressively, something that’s very important in engaging your listeners’ attention and interest. Even if what you eventually need to read in front of an audience is a year-end productivity report or a summary of the department’s paper use over the past decade, you’ll have more success in communicating the information if the tone and tempo of your voice is pleasant to listen to and rhythmically compelling.

To increase your ability to use words effectively, try your hand at writing poetry. If you use a fixed rhyme scheme, you’ll be forced to carefully choose your words, and you’ll also have to expand your use of synonyms, in case the word you initially choose doesn’t rhyme with the others. There are many traditional forms of poetry you can experiment with, from limericks to ballads, but one of the most well-known is the Shakespearean sonnet, with the rhyme scheme ABAB / CDCD / EFEF / GG. That is, in the first group of lines (the four-line stanzas are called quatrains) every other line rhymes, and in the last stanza (the two-line couplet) both lines rhyme. Here’s Shakespeare’s Sonnet 91:

Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their body’s force,
Some in their garments though new-fangled ill;
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:
But these particulars are not my measure,
All these I better in one general best.
Thy love is better than high birth to me,
Richer than wealth, prouder than garments’ costs,
Of more delight than hawks and horses be;
And having thee, of all men’s pride I boast:
Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take
All this away, and me most wretched make.

We encourage you to read poetry, and perhaps write a little as well, and learn to enjoy the beauty and precision of a well-chosen word.