Ekphrasis is from Greek meaning the description of a work of art as a rhetorical device. That's actually pretty straight forward, but another way to look at it, is it's highfalutin fan fiction, usually about paintings or pieces of music, but it can be about virtually anything. Look at or listen to the following piece of art and write a piece of prose or poetry that is inspired by some aspect of it.
Today's artwork is...
House by the Railroad by Rob Gonsalves
So if you've been doing the daily exercises you may've noticed I like Rob Gonsalves. I think his magic realism works especially well for ekphrastic exercises because its surreal nature allows the reader to interpret where the line between reality and metaphor lies. Perhaps that oncoming train is a large change in life for this young boy who is just getting past 'playing with trains'. Is it a destructive force or a transformative one? Has an actual train somehow crashed into this house/apartment? You decide, just don't let yourself be paralyzed by possibility and not write anything. If daily notebooking exercises are for anything, it's to just write, for not worrying about writing the best or right thing, but to get your brain producing words to describe something specific. Mental calisthenics if you will.
