After the early Middle Ages, the riddle was seldom used as a literary form in English. Tellingly, while Jonathan Swift composed at least eight verse riddles on these such as a pen, gold, and the privy, this was seen as a lapse in taste by many of his contemporaries.Gregg A. Hecimovich, Puzzling the Reader: Riddles in Nineteenth-century British Literature (New York: Peter Lang, 2008). However, although riddles are seldom used today as a literary form in their own right, they have arguably influenced the approach to poetry of a number of twentieth-century poets, such as Francis Ponge, Wallace Stevens, Richard Wilbur, Rainer M. Rilke, and Henrikas Radauskas.Živilė Gimbutas, The Riddle in the Poem (Dallas: University Press of America, 2004). The famed Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote "All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle ... is another riddle".
