This poem is probably one of the closest to prose in the collection. The longer lines and the larger stanzas give this poem a bit of a short story effect as the persona’s feelings of effacement and desperation to escape the difficulties of this life are brought to light. It consists of nine stanzas in the form of septets (seven lines each stanza) with very little enjambment, the end stops giving a sense of completeness to each idea, almost annihilating any further need for contemplation as the feelings of despair and “numbness” that the persona outlines seem to be reflected through this structural choice. On the surface, this poem is about a woman that has been placed in hospital for a surgery and is struggling to deal with the vividness of the red tulips that have been gifted to her in amongst an almost totally whitewashed hospital room. Hughes says that Plath wrote this poem in early 1961 after she was hospitalised for an appendectomy and he also mentioned that this was one of Plath’s first poems written spontaneously, without the need for a thesaurus or any other help. She had actually had a miscarriage not long before this, so this also likely have influenced her poem and her emotional state. The tulips can be thought to represent a connection to life that seems to drag the persona back from the pit of despair she has placed herself in. Quite often in Plath’s poetry, flowers are said to symbolise life, and here, it is the vibrant life that her speaker wishes to leave behind in a place of serene quiet and escape.
The first stanza begins with the classification of “the tulips” mentioned in the title as “too excitable.” Despite the word “excitable” implying a sense of fervour and happiness, there is a caesura in this line indicated with a comma that takes away the positive connotations of this word. The continuation of the line “it is winter here” is a bit of a double entendre, as it reflects both the season of winter, but also the cold, closed up and white elements that winter brings. In using this description, Plath may be indicating a deeper, more profound idea of “winter” as “here” may refer more to the speaker’s own state than merely the weather. As the second line begins, it becomes clear that the persona is directing her poem to what may be an audience as she asks them to “look” at what she sees. Although not something commonly noted, this idea of including others may be a way for the speaker to almost justify her own experiences by extending them on to others and seeing that they too see what she does.
