Sandra Allen "Plow" Hayden's Ferry Review

Appearing in Hayden's Ferry Review, Sandra Allen's essay "Plow" details with captivating clarity and insight a series of memories and thoughts that occur to the narrator, and patterns the narrator beholds, while listening to the radio, and while reflecting on one of her old teachers, Cecily, who calls to say she's ending her marriage.

Throughout the essay, as the writer reflects on a friend's long-planned suicide, wonderful explorations of narratives occur, as well as the people in the world who seem to live lives worthy of stories.

"I read once about how much, as a species, we rely on patterns. The world is full of too much and without patterns we wouldn't see, say, a leopard face in the fauna, or a bullet, or an oncoming train. People who see more patterns than others we might call spiritual, or schizophrenic, or writers."

The final lines of the essay, in which the writer turns inward and explores, are among some of the best I've read.

Read this essay.

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