Summary

“Tulips” opens with immediate mention of the titular flowers – “The tulips are too excitable,” especially in contrast against how “it is winter here” (1). Plath then immediately shifts her focus onto the sanitary stillness of the hospital setting in winter “how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in” (2). She notes her own attempt to incorporate herself into the motionlessness of the hospital through “learning peacefulness” (3). To that end, she also insists, “I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions” (5).

Nonetheless, Plath laments that despite her attempts at self-negation, her “head” is “Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut. / Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in” (8-10). She also describes the actions of the nurses as they tend to her. They are “Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another, / So it is impossible to tell...