Paul Verlaine with Verlaine, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Paul Valéry, Albert Samain and many others began to be referred to as "Symbolists." These poets would often share themes that parallel Schopenhauer's aesthetics and notions of will, fatality and unconscious forces, and used themes of sex (such as prostitutes), the city, irrational phenomena (delirium, dreams, narcotics, alcohol), and sometimes a vaguely medieval setting. In poetry, the symbolist procedure—as typified by Verlaine—was to use subtle suggestion instead of precise statement (rhetoric was banned) and to evoke moods and feelings through the magic of words and repeated sounds and the cadence of verse (musicality) and metrical innovation.
Sam Hunt (poet) tours have been undertaken with another poet and "fellow exuberant", Gary McCormick. Hunt has a high regard for other twentieth-century English language poets such as William Butler Yeats, W. H. Auden and Dylan Thomas (Hunt particularly loves Thomas' poem, "In my Craft or Sullen Art", which he sees as speaking to his own mission as a poet; he has said that he sometimes gives his occupation (to Customs Officers and such) as "sullen artist"). He also loves foreign language poets such as the Italian, Salvatore Quasimodo, and the Hungarian poet Jozsef Attila (Hunt often recites Attila's poem "A Hetedik" or