Produce Wagon - (Ted Kooser Contemporary Poetry) by Roy Scheele (Paperback)

About the Book

The poems in Produce Wagon explore the vast and varied circumstances of the human experience: the poet's love for his wife, his love of nature, his love for the family he grew up in, and his love of stories.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"Produce Wagon made me smile poem after poem and will bring up wonderful memories of family and love."--karla k. Morton, Roundup Magazine

"What is wonderful about a 'produce wagon' is its approachability, where we may select this fruit, that melon, to sample--and it's all so good; otherwise, the produce would never have made it to the wagon. Roy Scheele's Produce Wagon is like that. Every poem is delicious."--Mark Sanders, Western American Literature

"A lifetime's collection of small and precious things: the pinpoints of the senses, the topography of the soul, these myriad wonders of eloquent plainsong--Roy Scheele's incomparable, revelatory landscapes of acuity and affection."--Stephen Behrendt, author of Refractions and other collections

"In the best of poetry--unmistakably present and resonant to the reader--we find the physical embodiment of wordcraft: sound, rhythm, music. What Roy Scheele creates on the page is poetry's equivalent to the enlightenment of the senses."--Matt Sutherland, Foreword Reviews

"Roy Scheele is a poet of deep observation and patient discernment. Exquisite in prosody and immaculate in precision, each poem is a hall of mirrors where memory and desire refract off the sharp edges of the observable world."--Nina Murray, author of Alcestis in the Underworld

"Ted Kooser's observation has it right: this gorgeous book is first and always music, but enriched by unforgettable imagery, compelling narrative, and ekphrasis. Scheele creates Nebraska--that former sea now prairie--as the setting of the poet's life, here hauntingly worded, inhabited, and enlivened by intimate memory."--Rhina P. Espaillat, author of And After All

About the Author

Roy Scheele is professor emeritus of English at Doane University. He is the author of a dozen chapbooks and collections, including A Far Allegiance (Backwaters Press, 2010) and The Sledders. His verse and prose poems have been frequently anthologized, most notably in Strong Measures and Models of the Universe.