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.
Poet Lore In its first few decades, "Poet Lore" published the works of such renowned writers as Rabindranath Tagore, Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Verlaine, Frederick Mistral, Stephane Mallarmé, Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorky, Jose Echegaray, Hermann Hesse, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Emma Lazarus, and Sara Teasdale. Award-winning American poets whose early work (in some cases their first published poems) appeared in the pages of "Poet Lore" include Mary Oliver, Linda Pastan, Colette Inez, R. T. Smith, D. Nurkse, John Balaban, Carolyn Forché, Alice Fulton, Dana Gioia, Pablo Medina, Kim Addonizio, David Baker, Carl Phillips, Natasha Trethewey, Terrance Hayes, and Reginald Dwayne Betts. Poet