Stopping by Woods provides a doorway into an
understanding of the poet's great popularity with
ordinary readers. Jarrell observes, ordinary
readers think Frost the greatest poet alive, and
love some of his best poems almost as much as they
love some of his worst ones. He seems to them a
sensible, tender, humorous poet who knows all
about trees and farms and folks in New England.
This view crashes with that of intellectuals, who
have neglected or depreciated him: the reader of
Eliot or Auden usually dismisses Frost as
something inconsequentially good that he knew all
about long ago.
--Karen L. Kilcup
Robert Frost and Feminine Literary Tradition, University of Michigan Press, 1998:45, 46-47.