poetry texts, poem archive at plagiarist.com

I am a great lover of Plath, and while this not one of my favorite poems by her -- not so sharp and tightly-composed as her greatest ones -- it has a lot of beauty, eloquence and depth. I can't get over the grace with which the speaker expresses the immense peacefulness she feels while resting in the hospital. Clearly, she loves the state of HAVING given up all her responsibilities, her identity and her connections with the world, to be sit, dormant, and be taken care of by others in the regualar, controlled environment of a hospital -- "I am nobody . . . / I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses / and my history to the anaesthetists and my body to the surgeons." Plath summons her quiet power with imagery to express this relieving calmness, saying, so evocatively, of the nurses, "My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water / Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently." She loves the relief of her disconnection FROM her normal life and the sort of purity she's been granted by being made a passive patient: "I watched my teaset . . . my books / Sink out of sight . . . / I am a nun now, I have never been so pure," and, finally, "The peacefulness is so big it dazes you." She repeatedly associates this calm with winter and its whiteness, calling the place "snowed in."

It is in the next stanza that the tulips come in. They are red and living. They disrupt horribly the white peacefulness of the hospital room. As they were sent by her husband, it is clear that they serve as not only symbolic, but even literal reminders of the life and responsibilities that she will inevitably have to return to. The speaker even makes this especially clear by attacking the pictures of her husband and daughter, calling their images "little smiling hooks" that "catch onto my skin." It is just one of those poetic coincidences that the tulips both disrupt the blissfully monotonous whiteness of the room and are constant, literally vivid, material reminders of the life and responsibilities FROM which the speaker cannot completely separate herself. To try to understand this feeling, think of the moment when you are sleeping, breathing shallowly and enjoying a good dream, and the harsh, electric whine of your alarm clock wakes you up and tells you your dream is fake and you have to get up no matter how tired or cold you are.

But the speaker does not just "not like" the tulips, as an earlier comment asserted, but very manifestly feel that they, and what they represent, have power over her. She says that they "eat my oxygen" and "weigh me down . . . / a dozen red lead sinkers round my neck." "They should be behind bars" means, figuratively, that she should be able to separate herself permanently FROM the personal and social forces that will drag her back to her old, busy life.

Indeed, unlike many other great poems, I find that the symbolisms in this one this are fairly obvious and clearly-stated. They can be seen after no more than one or two rereadings by all but the most obtuse readers. They need hardly be called "secret." And while I don't necessarily agree with Andrew Mayer that the crassness and shallowness of popular culture is Varun's fault, or vice versa, or whatever, I am surprised by Varun's failure to see, well, anything at all in "Tulips." It seems to me that this must be the result of impatience to really read and digest a poem of this length, or else the desire, FROM the outset, to see nothing in it, because Varun had already decided that he preferred the flowy, fluttering obviousness of Wordsworth, and was stubbornly unwilling to appreciate what he might see in Plath.

Still, even if one accepts Ivor Biggon's (shallow) observation that the poem is simply about "a woman who doesn't like flowers," it would be very unwise to ignore all the immenne symbolism and froce that that statement can carry. Besides sensual beauty and fertility, flowers often represent the vitality of spring, the regrowth of life after the dormancy of winter (think of the opening of Eliot's "Waste Land': "April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land . . . Winter kept us warmin, covering / Earth in forgetful snow . . ."). It is just this sort of force of reawakening that the speaker fears; she would rather remain "snowed-in" and "pure." Even further, though, it would be an oversimplification to say that the aversion is simply to flowers; if you think about it, a virginal white little lilt-of-the-valley would fit right in in this hospital room. It is the tulips, with their large, fleshy blood-red petals and their visible black stamens, that are so jarring, concentrating the speaker's attention and agitating her peace, seeming to breathe or to weigh on her neck.

Finally, though admittedly it may take some analysis (oh no!), its important to see the irony of "Tulips." The speaker loves the peace she's experiencing, the state of dormancy which makes her something in between living and dead. The skeptical reader, however, can see the danger in her love of anaesthetic drugs that take away her ability to feel, and the chilling humor in her wish to stop seeing and hearing as well.

She describes herself as being underwater (" . . . the water went over my head."), which of couse would drown a living person. Her state of peace, blindness, deafness, numbness and submersion is terribly close to death. And though she accuses the tulips of dragging her down like "red lead sinkers," the reader can see they are actually calling her back to life, pulling her up, saving her, no matter how painful that may be.

The inability of Varun and Ivor to see or acknowledge any of these things may be due to their unwillingness either to consider such objects as needles, flowers and family pctures in the strange new ways the poet presents, or to draw on what they know to speculate on their underlying meanings. This is, to me, a rejection of poetry itself, which is more more than just a lot of words that flow together nicely. Perhaps, though, it would be easier for them to be introduced to Plath through some of her more concise but still wonderful earlier poems, such as "The Bull of Bendylaw" or "The Eye-Mote," or her later, more audaciously declarative ones such as "Daddy" or "Purdah."

Lastly (I know this is a long comment, but hey, it's a long poem) about the idea of "secret meanings" and immediate clarity: I've learned FROM experience that unraveling a poem's mysteries, stepping INTO its world, is one of the great joys of literature. There are later Plath poems, such as "Totem" and "The Munich Mannequins" that were absolutely incomprehensible to me when I first read them -- might as well have been written in Bengali. But I was intrigued, and coming to connect their parts to one another, to other literature, and to the world at large, I came to understand them more and more. I love their humor, their ironies, and the completeness of their visions put INTO such concise language (unlike mine). They are a great joy to me, and I have memorized large portions of both out of sheer frequency of reading.

Samuel, I enjoyed reading your comments very much. It's very pleasant to read the comments of someone equipped with the necessary intelligence and desire to explore in spite of difficulties. I admit I was rather hard on Varun and Biggon, but I hope that the AE Houseman comment explains, even if it does not justify, my mood. I’m not sure myself of the extent to which the crassness of dumbed down modern culture is to blame, but anyone expecting due consideration of a piece of poetry will do so in an era wholly inimical to the task. ‘Difficult’ poetry is easily marginalised as elitist and therefore ideologically unsound.

I have been called a ‘disciple’ of George Steiner because of my attempts to bring his work to the notice of those who might enjoy it as much as I do. Nevertheless, I will quote him again.

“To direct a student’s attention towards that which, at first, exceeds his grasp, but whose compelling stature and fascination will draw him after it. Simplification, levelling, watering down, as they now prevail in all but the most privileged education are criminal. They condescend fatally to the capacities unbeknown within ourselves. Attacks on so-called elitism mask a vulgar condescension: towards all those judged a priori to be incapable of better things.”

“In late capitalism, money bellows. It packages time and space. The censorship of the market over what is difficult and innovative, over what is intellectually and aesthetically demanding - the 'little magazine', the philosophic treatise, the avant-garde composition - is often more effective than that exercised by political censorship and suppression. Serious literature, music and thought have the exasperating habit of being productive under tyranny. 'Squeeze us, we are olives,' said James Joyce. 'Censorship is the mother of metaphor,' added Borges. The mass-consumer market, the mass-media can bury alive. Freedom and licence can bestow insignificance (what poem could have shaken the White House as Mandelstam's epigram shook Stalin?).

But the conundrum of inelasticity in the number and quality of respondents, despite enrichments in schooling and access, could lie deeper. It may be that the human capacity to be interested in, to be moved by, to grasp and answer to major thought and form, though self-evidently far more widespread than are the springs of creation, is itself confined to a more or less constant minority. 'The truth has always been with the few' (Goethe). Education, should it purpose to do so, can enlarge this minority. But not indefinitely; not, one intuits, by very much. Men and women who desire to resolve non-linear equations, who can take in, at any coherent level, a Bach partita, who respond to a poem by Donne or seek to grapple with what Kant calls a 'transcendental deduction' - each of these being among the unprofitable summits of the human story - are, will most likely continue to be, few. They are an elite. This word has been incessantly thrust at me. Yet its meaning is perfectly straightforward. An elite in the world of pop-music, of athletics, of the bourse or of the life of the mind is simply that GROUP which knows, which says that some things are better, are more worth getting to know and to love, than others.”

PS What do you make of the opening of ‘Medusa’, which, in places, seems as impenetrable to me as you originally found ‘Totem’ or ‘The Munich Mannnequins’?

I like Plath, I really do, and anything I would have had to say about this poem has already been said in previous comments. However...

Andrew Mayers...honey, you need to open your mind a little. Yes, society has dumbed down literature, but at least it's still there! And the fact that it is forced upon unwilling minds in many an English class does not help those unwilling minds grok the fullness of the poem, and the art within. I personally love English class, poetry, and literature in general. However, my own mind has been unwilling at times, especially with literary items I was not interested in at all (Flannery O'Connor, for one) but was forced to read and explicate time and again. I passed that part of English, but hated it the entire time. My point? You can't blame someone for not liking something they did not find on their own. If I had read Flannery O'Connor's grotesque stories on my own, I may have liked them better than the force-fed version I got in English. You can take a horse to water, but you can't make the bugger drink. Anyway...

I vastly prefer Lady Lazarus over Tulips - the lines are like biting INTO a lemon with a cut in your mouth - but Tulips is not a horrible, sucky poem. However, I read it before it was forced down my throat, so I had the chance to digest it on my own. Perhaps if more emphasis was placed on reading rather than mathematics or social studies in elementary, secondary and high schools, we would have more people out there who enjoyed literature and poetry for the art form it is. And when we are exposed to literature, we should be exposed to decent stuff like Plath, rather than the (correctly said) banal rhyming boring Wordsworth and Frost. (I abhor Frost.) Give us decent literature or give us death! Wheee!

The Kitten

Tulips not one

are much more fun.

Ivor Biggon, if you really think that this poem is just a piece of crap about a woman about to die, maybe you shouldn't say anything at all, you obviously have no litterary culture, there is much more then just a woman dieing, if u know Plath's past or what she's been through, and her words are not always explicit.

I completely disagree with Ivor (first comment). Plaths' ability to focus and explore thought provoking themes through a medium as trivial as a bunch of tulips is incredible. The essence of the poem is Plaths' ability to come to grips with who she is. It ends in a warm hopeful mood, quite contradictory to her more angry confessional poetry, such as Daddy. Tulips is a beautifull poem, not over-rated at all, but requiring some thought and intelligence to gain comprehension of her verse.

Wow! What a find this place is. Anyway, I have had quie a lot of fun reading the comments about Tulips. I have to say that I agree with Andrew (among others) that the poem is remarkable and worthy of serious attention. I once wrote a paper that involved a lexical set analysis of Tulips. The images of things to do with water or the colours red and white run throughout the poem in a fascinating way.

By the way, I was stunned to see Kitten use the verb "grok" in her comments. Stranger in a Strange land was one of my favourites as a teenager, but I thought it had dropped out of currency.

Cheers
Glen

In my Google search for Tulips I came across this poem. The Google blurb had a site that was a critique of the poem and mentioned something about Plath's hatred of the tulips. I HAD to read this poem. Tulips are my favorite flower. How could anyone "Hate" them?
Then I read the poem, and how I could empathize with Plath's plight!
In her poem she refers to herself as a 30 year old boat now used for cargo. I am 31 and recently had my fourth child. Yes, I adore my family, but how I reveled in those few days in the sterile, bland tranquility of my hospital room. Paralleling my own recent experience with Plath's "Tulips" I have to nod at her hatred for those tulips. I would have hated those tulips in my peaceful hospital room, too.
She doesn't hate tulips. She hated THOSE tulips.

Great poem. I'll be reading some more of Plth.

Tulips is one of my favorite of Plaths poems. I first had it read to me in middle school, and ever since, ive been trying to understand its true meaning. Ofcourse most of us know of her illness and hospitalization, and how the bright red tulips were too brilliant in the white sterile world around her, but maybe there is more. Maybe we will never know what her intentions were in this poem.. but i guess we will never know, if thats the case. I believe sometimes writing poetry is a form of therapy, and in this case.. i think thats exactly what it was. For those who dont understand Plaths poetry, or appreciate it, you dont realize the great world you are missing. Go out and buy a book of her poetry, one that has comments and descriptions of each poem, and you will see that Sylvia Plaths poems are more than just stanza's without meaning,.. they are an autobiograhpy of her life.. and the lives of those she knew. They are accounts of the world around her, as she looked at it through her prison of sadness.. but dont take my word for it... see for yourself.

Tulips, reflecting Plath's experience in the hospital for an appendectomy, is an echo of her experience in the asylum in 1953. In "The Bell Jar", an institutionalized Esther Greenwood (Plath, fictionalized) tosses a bouquet of red roses in the trash - flowers given to her by her mother - and for the first time expresses her disdain for her mother to her psychiatrist. This was a breakthrough moment for Esther; the psychiatrist lets escape a small smile, and suggests that there be no more visitors, ie, Esther's mother. A reading of Plaths journal and "Letter's Home", published in 1975 by Plath's mother, clarifies the very close correlation between Plath's ex-periences in the fall and winter of 1953, and those she fictionalizes in "The Bell Jar", thus one can imagine how the tulips from Ted Hughes, along with the hospital setting, the gurney, the sedative, would have triggered Plath's unpleasant memories of the asylum, and worse, her ever present fear that the bell jar had once more settled. Indeed, Hughes notes in his editorial comments in the 1982 version of Plath's journal that her spiral back into madness and eventual suicide were evident upon the penning of 'Tulips.'

Significantly, this symbolism would be used by Hughes himself in his play "The Difficulties of a Bridegroom", which was radio broadcast in London a few days before Plath's suicide. This play was based upon a dream Hughes had that he had run over a hare, which he subsequently sold to a butcher, using the proceeds to buy RED ROSES for his mistress. The second part of the play deals with the fearful obsession the male protagonist feels for his mistresses body. Sylvia Plath's good friend, Elizabeth Sigmund, to whom "The Bell Jar" was dedicated, explains further: "It must have been agonizing for Sylvia to hear this, and to realise that their circle of literary friends would have been listening, as anything new by Ted was an important event. The public humiliation [resulting from the revalation of Hughes' affair]and loss of dignity must have been unbearable for Sylvia." Indeed, as painful as the public humiliation of an affair revealed may have been, more painful still would be Hughes insensitive, mocking use of the roses, a very real metaphor for consuming love in Plath's life. Just as Hughes knew that "Tulips" signified the beginning of the end for Plath, surely he also knew the painful significance of a bunch of red roses to Plath, and moreover, its link to and impact on her sanity.