About today's writing prompt genre: 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...
The poem "Blandeur" by Kay Ryan. Kay Ryan loves rhyme. She peppers her sparse verses with it, especially internal rhyme, or as she calls it "recombinant" rhyme, or rhyme not occurring at the end of the line. Her poems are almost always very slim and extremely musical.
Blandeur
If it please God,
let less happen.
Even out Earth's
rondure, flatten
Eiger, blanden
the Grand Canyon.
Make valleys
slightly higher,
widen fissures
to arable land,
remand your
terrible glaciers
and silence
their calving,
halving or doubling
all geographical feature
toward the mean.
Unlean against our hearts.
Withdraw your grandeur
from these parts.
**
Now, it's your turn. Take one aspect of the Kay Ryan poem, any aspect, and run with it in your own piece. Whether you are sparked by the frequent internal and end rhymes, the portmanteau (essentially a mash-up of two words—one of the most used words would be "spork") of the title Blandeur (here is a list of already recognized portmanteaus), or perhaps the idea of doing away with something that is universally liked (as in, with this poem, the grandeur of geological features like the Grand Canyon or the Eiger. Maybe you could facetiously argue that the world would be better without chocolate, or starlight or palm trees/beaches or something. The options are virtually unlimited.
