By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘I had been hungry, all the Years’ is one of hundreds of poems Emily Dickinson wrote but never published. (As we’ve previously noted, when she died she was far better-known as a gardener than as a poet.) ‘I had been hungry, all the Years’ uses hunger and food as metaphors, a way to explore other themes, much as Dickinson does elsewhere (such as when she compares fame to food).