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by Ken Hada

The poems in Margaritas and Redfish are sensual delights. Hada experiences the world (and especially nature) with intensity, and in words that delight and surprise, he loans us his visions, his understandings.

"As quiet as the countryside he describes, Ken Hada has cut his own path to become one of America’s finest poets. The poems of Margaritas and Redfish lead us to the chilling waters of early morning fishing spots, pick-up trucks on country roads and dark cold mornings among cedars and sycamores. Hada’s poetry beckons the light. He is the lonely fisherman, a midwestern Hemingway who rises long before daylight, climbing from his sleeping bag into the frozen dark in the title poem, 'She should have had more sense / than to fall in love with a fisherman,' and he is the old man in 'Night Fisherman' who 'sets his gear, attending duty / like a priest preparing / elements of communion / joined/ by bait splashing in gentle / surf, the waning moon, far-off / stars.' Dawn whispers through the words of Ken Hada—the dawn of paradox, as nature shines in the spirit of the divine and the lure of sensuality."

—Tim Tingle, Choctaw storyteller, author House of Purple Cedar

"I know Ken’s Canadian River from 'slipping / through shifting sand, eyes / pierced…' (67) picking plums miles upstream. I have known many of the places he writes about all my life. And I am grateful for the opportunity Margaritas and Redfish gives me to see them now for the first time."

—Steve Schroeder