by Dolores Moore

Created on: July 31, 2008

Sylvia Plath, wrote what were described as personal, confessional poems. She incorporated mythology, classical figures, nature, literature, but always she gave herself to the reader. In reading 'Tulips' (1961), I would have to say that this is one of the saddest, mose despair-filled and lonely pieces of poetry I have ever encountered. It moved me from "peacefulness" (l. 3), then "numbness" (l. 17), to an understanding of her plight, her heart and mind, and through the tulips themselves, to an experience of violence and fear.

"The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me." (l. 36) and
"The vivid tulips eat my oxygen" (l. 49) and then,
"The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat." (l. 58-59)

Given that we know the poet to have suffered greatly from depression, and that she had earlier attempted suicide, it is no surprise that 'Tulips' reflects a person who is heart-sick and searching for eternal peace. She evntually succeeded in taking her own life in 1963. In this free verse poem, with the use of enjambment, metaphor, personification, symbolism and vivid imagery, she combined all these elements to create an intensely dark emotional experience. It is safe to assume that the speaker is the poet's own voice. Each seven lined stanza holds a subtle melody as it flows, and an underdlying rhythm that feels like a slow heart beat.

The stark, yet peaceful beginning, with the different shades of white, through such words as "snowed-in" (l. 2), "two white lids" (l. 9), and "their white caps" (1. 12), indicated a lack of colour that brought some peace, as she lay there, passive. She went on to state "Now I have lost myself" (l. 18) and "I have let things slip," (l. 22). She was begging to be left alone, to slip away. As she described what "things" she meant, it became clear that she wanted freedom, to be let go, to be just herself. The image of being away from the world and the trappings of her life, was strongly explicit in "I am a nun now, I have never been so pure." (l. 28).

The concept of peace and freedom and their destruction by the violent trespass of the tulips, was further pursued in the following verses, as the speaker grew ever more disturbed by the flowers that she did not want. Her state of mind seemed to have both only a tenuous grasp of reality, and at the same time, crystal clarity; that Plath accomplised this shows the quality of her poetic abilities. Her physical body was "...flat,

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