Produce Wagon: New and Selected Poems

The poems in Produce Wagon explore the vast and varied circumstances of the human experience. Roy Scheele delves into his love for his wife in “Remembrances,” the opening poem from his first chapbook, and “Driving after Dark”; his fascination with the natural world in poems such as “How the Fox Got Away” and “Late Autumn Woods”; his appreciation of his family in “A Kitchen Memory” and “The Long Rise”; and his fondness for stories in “The Carny Circuit” and “In the Clear.” In these and the other poems in the collection, Scheele uses a variety of traditional verse forms as well as free verse and syllabics, carefully fitting the form of each poem to his subject matter.

Though most of the poems are set in Nebraska and neighboring states, there is a universality to the subjects Scheele addresses. In these poems anywhere is everywhere.