The Synonym Tables

Published by The Poetry Question

The Synonym Tables examine language closely and investigates how it shifts over time. By extracting synonyms for common words today and comparing them to synonyms for the same terms from1947 in the scientific format of a table, the reader is invited to consider how the tool of language works, evolves, shrinks, expands, and fails.

​Several of The Synonym Tables first appeared in Storm Cellar, "A literary journal of safety and danger," and were Pushcart Nominated. Volume 8, No. 3.


Praise for "The Synonym Tables"

"Roche takes a linguistic approach to poetry by looking at the history of words and comparing their synonyms. The reader can not help but be an active participant when trying to make sense of the often found disparity between words and their interpretations from the past to the present. You might find yourself making an argument for such a dramatic shift in the tables or determine that there is inherent prejudice in the diction itself. This ambiguity of the comparison is the strength of The Synonym Tables; it truly proffers thought.

—Tyler Pufpaff, Author of A Quarter Life

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