Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson is an important poet principally because of the distinctiveness of her writing. Though only 7 out of her 1,200 poems were published critics still classify her as one of the principle poets of her time. In Dickinson's life the most important things to her were love, religion, individuality and nature. While writting about these themes she followed her lifestyle by braking away from the traditional forms of writing and wrote with an intense energy and complexity never seen before and rarely seen today. Her poems are written expressions of personal experiences throughout her life.