"Tulips" is a poem by American poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...

. The poem was written in 1961 and included in the collection Ariel

Ariel (Plath)

Ariel was the second book of Sylvia Plath's poetry to be published, and was originally published in 1965, two years after her death by suicide. The poems in the 1965 edition of Ariel, with their free flowing images and characteristically menacing psychic landscapes, marked a dramatic turn from...

published in 1965.

Style and Structure

"Tulips" is written in nine 7-line stanzas, totaling sixty-three lines, and follows no rhyme scheme. Richard Grey comments on the verse that it is "nominally free but has a subtle iambic base; the lines... ...move quietly and mellifluously; and a sense of hidden melody ('learning' / 'lying', 'lying by myself quietly', 'light lies', 'white walls') transforms apparently casual remarks into memorable speech."

Context

Ted Hughes has stated "Tulips" was written about some flowers she received while in a hospital recovering from an appendectomy." Unlike many of her other Ariel poems, "Tulips" was written long before her eventual suicide in 1963.

Analysis

The speaker is in a hospital bed and describes her experience using an image of red tulip

Tulip

The tulip is a perennial, bulbous plant with showy flowers in the genus Tulipa, which comprises 109 species and belongs to the family Liliaceae. The genus's native range extends from as far west as Southern Europe, North Africa, Anatolia, and Iran to the Northwest of China. The tulip's centre of...

s (presumably a gift) that interrupt her calm stay in the white hospital.
During her stay at the hospital she has given up everything, including her identity, as expressed by the lines:

I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.

I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses

And my history to the anaesthetist and my body to surgeons.

She wishes to remain in a state of emptiness, but the flowers intrude upon this state:

I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted

To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.

Eileen Aird remarks: "The world of Ariel is a black and white one into which red, which represents blood, the heart and living is always an intrusion." Renée R. Curry takes this further by claiming the tulips signify "by their glorious and bold colors, glaring Otherness."

External links

• Critiques on "Tulips, at Modern American Poetry Society