Poetry has numerous meanings to people. Authors use various writing techniques to relate meanings of poems. According to Bedford/ St. Martin "Part of what makes poetry interesting is its indirectness, its refusal to state something simply as the way it is." W.H. Auden's "Stop All the Clocks, Cut Off the Telephone," John Updike's "Ex-Basketball Player" and Donald Hall's "My Son, My Executioner" use irony, symbolism and hyperboles to show the meaning of their poems.
Irony is important to poets to relay the meaning of their poems. Irony refers to a difference between the way something appe…
