Students enrolled in high school or college courses are fortunate because they often have resources available to them for improving poetry vocabulary. It is a good idea to visit your school's English department to obtain vocabulary lists that focus on poetry terminology; an English teacher may also be able to provide such lists, as will a writing department or even a testing department. If you are not enrolled in school, you may want to do an Internet search for poetry vocabulary lists aimed specifically at the genre or time period of poetry you are interested in studying.
Sometimes it is necessary to improve your poetry vocabulary in preparation for an exam or test. If this is the case, the vocabulary lists will tend to be more specialized, so you should visit the English department at your school or do a search on the Internet for resources on the particular exam you intend to take. Studying these lists is a great first step toward improving your poetry vocabulary, but rote memorization will only go so far. The best way to improve your poetry vocabulary is to learn the terms and use them regularly in conversation or writing to ensure you remember the meanings of the words and understand how they are used in context.
Another great way to improve your poetry vocabulary is to simply read voraciously. If you read often, you will find the same words will occur repeatedly in various works. Write these words down and look up the definitions after you finish reading a passage. Write down these definitions, and then go back to the passage and re-read the sentences in which the words occur. This will help you understand the words in context, and it will help you remember the definition and use through repetition.
It often helps to study vocabulary with other people who are also studying this topic. Try to use the vocabulary words in conversation with study partners, and whenever possible try to quiz each other on words and definitions. If the terms you are learning refer to poetry writing techniques, try writing lines of poetry using these techniques. This will give you practical knowledge of the use of the terms, and it may also provide you with a visual cue that can help you remember the definition of the words later on. It may also help to assign an image to the words; alliteration, for example, may be remembered by picturing a long line of the letter A repeatedly written on a blackboard.
