Emily Dickenson And the Theme of Death Emily Dickenson, an unconventional 19th century poet, used death as the theme for many of her poems. Dickenson's poems offer a creative and refreshingly different perspective on death and its effects on others. In Dickenson's poems, death is often personified, and is also assigned to personalities far different from the traditional "horror movie" roles. Dickenson also combines imaginative diction with vivid imagery to create astonishingly powerful poems. In the 1862 poem, After Great pain, a formal feeling comes--, Emily Dickenson presents death from the perspective of the bereaved. This poem is wri