Reddit reviews American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition

The reference is an actual dictionary ...

If you prefer the Webster website, then that works just fine too.

Welcome to OCPoetry (as commenter)! That didn't come off as ranty at all. I think we need longer (considered, earnest) comments on the internet.

Anyway, I'm not an expert by any means, just a friendly loner/devotee with a spending problem and a massive library. I've read a lot of poetry and writing about poetry -- I think that's probably the key to understanding the stuff on a deeper level as both a reader and a writer.

I'm going to be brief with this comment cause I'm at work, BUT with the addition of read, read, read, my advice to /u/grandmasterlane above stands: Spend more time with your poems. Find ways to make the poem you're working on the only thing you think about.

Additionally, buy a copy of Roget's and a good dictionary and spend lots of time in those places and on etymonline.com exploring the meaning and origin of words. I think loving words is super important. Every time you choose one word over another it has to be an act of determination, calculation, holistic consideration. Every word collides with every other word in a poem. It's a weird thing to see a masterful poet make that work. I'll try and think of a particular great example and get back to you. (Immediately I think of Wallace Stevens' "Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself" a poem in which the poet uses EVERY. SINGLE. WORD. to alchemically evoke the image/experience of a sun actively rising in the reader's mind. That short poem appears in my mind because I've spent hours with it. Reading. Rereading. Defining every word that I thought I knew. Memorizing. Reciting.)

OK. That's it for now.