René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926) — better known as Rainer Maria Rilke (German: [ˈʁaɪnɐ maˈʁiːa ˈʁɪlkə]) — was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets", writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. Several critics have described Rilke's work as inherently "mystical". His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry, and several volumes of correspondence in which he invokes haunting images that focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety. In the United States, Rilke is one of the more popular, best-selling poets—along with 13th-century Sufi mystic Rumi and 20th-century Lebanese-American poet Khalil Gibran.