Week 5: Krysten Hill

Week 5: College Reading and Writing: Suffolk County House of Corrections at South Bay

Krysten Hill: Annotating, Summarizing, Analyzing, Imitating

to annotate: to make notes on something to help you understand it better

to summarize: to put something in your own words

to analyze: to consider a question on the text, providing supporting examples from the text

to imitate: to create an original piece of writing based on something you have read

Exercise: Read and annotate

1. Read the poem out loud and underline any words you need to look up

2. Write any questions you have in the margins

3. Put tricky parts into your own words in notes in the margins

Feast by Krysten Hill

1)Never felt like my hands belonged anywhere

near my aunt’s kitchen unless

the food was already made

and I was fixing myself a plate.

When she trusts me with a job

as important as the sweet potato pie,

of course my hand shakes pulling it out

the oven, trying to make it look as easy

as she does, and my wrist catches

10)on the metal lip of the rack and I drop

what took me too long to peel

and boil and season in the first place.

There are worst things to fall to your knees for,

but I don’t know, in a black woman’s kitchen

this feels like a sin. Instead of casting me out,

she steps over the mess on her floor

and sets her eyes on my injury,

turning the puckering skin of my wrist

over in her hands, saying it don’t look that bad

20)like she’s done all my life when I broke

my face on the sidewalk or cut my own hair.

She starts over on another pie like it’s no big thing,

like she did when my uncle went into a bedroom closet,

and bit down on the barrel of his revolver. After

the funeral she stayed in the kitchen

even when company came and tried

to take over her grief. She just kept making

her own mourning feast, pulling heavy

pans out the oven. Like then, I watch her

30)mind go into another room where it can be

unbothered. While I nurse my burn

with the aloe she grows on the windowsill, she hums,

blending brown sugar and butter

to the soft boiled bodies of sweet potato,

her brisk cinnamon hand turning orbits

of gold in the cracked clay bowl

that stays steady on her hip.

Exercise: Questions for Comprehension

1. Is the aunt mad at the speaker for messing up the pie? Use quotation and summary to support your answer. 

2. What are some of the aunt's strategies for dealing with hard things?  Use quotation and summary to support your answer. 

Exercise: Summarize the poem

Write a paragraph summarizing the poem in your own words, with quotations from the poem, in-text citation, and a Work Cited Page

example summary, incorporating quotation and in-text citation:

Krysten Hill's poem "Feast" features an aunt who deals with difficulty "like it’s no big thing" (line 22).  Hard things she deals with include a ruined pie, a burned wrist, and a husband "bit[ing] down on the barrel of his revolver" (Hill lines 10, 17, 22-23).

Work Cited Page

Hill, Krysten. Take Magazine. December, 2017.

Exercise: Analysis

Question for analysis: The poem says "I watch her/mind go into another room where it can be/unbothered" (Hill lines 29-31).  What do you think this looks like? How do you think being "unbothered" helps the aunt move forward?  Use quotation and summary to support your answer. 

Exercise: Imitation

Write your own poem about dealing with hard things.  Include a kitchen, specific foods, and the verbs "nurse," "grow," and "hum."