Poetry. "In A FAR ALLEGIANCE, Roy Scheele offers us poems with the tough elegance of bleached bones. These poems are characterized by taut lines, crisp diction, and electric imagery and a search within each poem for a perfect expressive form--sometimes rhymed, sometimes stanzaic, sometimes blank verse, always with a compelling sense of closure in the way the last line seals the bond between form and meaning. Whether recalling childhood experience in Nebraska, ruminating on the nature of memory, or recalling a scene or work of art, these poems have the integrity of the well-wrought urn"--Les Whipp.

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.