Emily Dickinson

Hunger

I HAD been hungry all the years;
My noon had come, to dine;

Trembling approach

Physical reaction to finally getting what you wanted. The body knows something the mind hasn't figured out yet.

I, trembling, drew the table near,
And touched the curious wine.
'T was this on tables I had seen,
When turning, hungry, lone,
I looked in windows, for the wealth
I could not hope to own.
I did not know the ample bread,
'T was so unlike the crumb

Crumb vs. bread

She's been living on scraps—literally comparing herself to birds. The scale jump from crumbs to 'ample bread' is the whole problem.

The birds and I had often shared
In Nature's dining-room.
The plenty hurt me, 't was so new,—
Myself felt ill and odd,

Mountain bush

Wild thing forced into civilization. Berries on roads get crushed by wheels—this isn't about thriving, it's about survival in the wrong habitat.

As berry of a mountain bush
Transplanted to the road.
Nor was I hungry; so I found
That hunger was a way

Hunger was a way

The turn: hunger wasn't about wanting food. It was an identity, a mode of being. Getting what you want destroys who you were.

Outside windows

The final diagnosis—desire only exists in exclusion. Once you enter, you're neither hungry nor yourself.

Of persons outside windows,
The entering takes away.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Paradox of Getting What You Want

Dickinson wrote this around 1862, during her most productive period—and her most reclusive. She'd withdrawn from Amherst society almost completely, watching life through her window. This poem reads like a thought experiment: what if I actually got what I claim to want?

The class metaphor is unmissable—she's looking "in windows, for the wealth / I could not hope to own." But watch what happens when she gets inside. The wine is "curious" (strange, worth examining), the bread is "ample" (too much, overwhelming). These aren't celebration words. The plenty "hurt" her. This is crucial: she doesn't say it disappointed her or wasn't what she expected. It caused pain.

The mountain bush simile explains why. A wild berry transplanted to a road doesn't become a garden plant—it becomes roadkill. The road isn't an upgrade from the mountain; it's a different ecosystem entirely. Dickinson spent her life cultivating her peculiarity, her outsider status. This poem asks: what if that outsider position wasn't deprivation but identity?

Hunger as Mode, Not Lack

The final stanza rewrites everything that came before. "Nor was I hungry"—wait, what? The whole poem has been about hunger. But she's saying hunger was never about the missing thing. It was "a way / Of persons outside windows." A way of being. A perspective. A life.

"The entering takes away"—grammatically brilliant. Entering doesn't give you what you wanted; it takes away your wanting. And if you are your wanting (if hunger is your "way"), then entering takes away you. The poem ends with loss disguised as gain.

This connects to Dickinson's choice of seclusion. She had opportunities for publication, marriage, social prominence—the "table" was available. But entering that world would have meant losing the hunger that made her who she was. The "crumb" she shared with birds in "Nature's dining-room" wasn't poverty—it was a different kind of wealth, one that required staying outside.