Understanding death within eternal poetic time.

This article is an a/r/tographic (artist/researcher/teacher) study through autobiographical close readings of several poems as a means to understand death within what the author calls eternal poetic time. Moving beyond the author's childhood's static image of death, the paper suggests that the ephemeral nature of life is not something to fear, but makes living more beautiful and eternal through the making and sharing of poetry and art. This paper is the first part of a three-paper study, which includes original poetry by the author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]