SOURCE: Greiner, Donald J. “The Indispensable Robert Frost.” In Critical Essays on Robert Frost, edited by Philip J. Gerber, pp. 222-38. Boston: G. K. Hall and Co., 1982.

In the following excerpt, Greiner argues that it is the element of “ambiguity” which makes “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” a great poem.

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (New Hampshire, 1923) was written in late spring 1922 and first published in the New Republic (7 March 1923). Yes, I know; the poem is overanthologized and thus overly familiar, but that does not mean that it is overpraised. Its deceptive simplicity, its ambiguity, and its interlocking rhyme scheme have been so lauded that it is now one of the most explicated American poems. But a more important point is that “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is the poem of dark woods in American literature. Frost himself knew that the poem...