Review
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Title: Loved Ones: Poems
Authors: Kevin Klein
Publisher: Greg Kofford Books
Genre: Poetry
Year Published: 2026
Number of Pages: 71
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-58958-839-4
Price: $9.95
Reviewed by Conor Hilton for the Association of Mormon Letters
Loved Ones, Kevin Klein’s new collection of poetry, is infused with a lived, Latter-day Saint religious imagination. Klein’s poems are grounded in the quotidian realities of being a Latter-day Saint, yet often contain flourishes indicative of spiritual convictions surrounding realities that transcend our natural, mortal perception. For Klein, this is the lived Latter-day Saint experience, and his poems allow the reader to step into that experience.
Rather than continue to speak generally about the collection, I’ll highlight a few poems that particularly struck me. The first is “Sufficiently Instructed”, which offers a reimagining of the fall of Adam and Eve. The poem, like many in the collection, is infused with a lightness and joy, an orientation of delight and amusement to the world, even in times of hardship and frustration. My favorite lines of the poem are “God sighs. ‘Well, it’s a start./Off you go.’” What a wonderful, surprising, relatable way to reorient how we approach this story!
Another poem that features God and is perhaps the peak example of Klein’s ability to layer transcendent realities on top of quotidian experiences, is “Middle School Band Concert”. Early in the poem, Klein writes that “God strides onstage, beaming.” The poem shifts between a standard middle school band concert and a reimagining of the council in heaven or perhaps an allegory for mortality or some blend of the two. I love the image of God as a middle school band teacher, filled with pride and excitement for the concert—I couldn’t help but imagine God as my own junior high band teacher, Mr. Wright and his particular mannerisms giving body and shape to the striding and beaming of God. The poem ends more grounded, describing a player sharing music with another and our speaker reflecting, “It doesn’t improve the song./Just the concert.” What a set of lines! What an ending! A powerful, lovely, seemingly small moment and insight delivering some lovely truth about mortality and helping each other.
Finally, my pick for the best poem in the collection is “Twelve Ways of Taking the Sacrament”. I could offer thoughts and analysis of every section of the poem and the way that they build on and work together, but here, I’ll simply highlight two lines from the second section, describing a sober alcoholic, recent convert participating in the sacrament ordinance. Klein writes, “and quick as forgiveness/knocks back that holy thimble like a shotglass.” Incredible. Love the phrase “quick as forgiveness” for playing with expectations and suggesting that redemption and forgiveness and grace quickly come to us, that there’s a rapidity there, alongside perhaps the slower, more sustained, daily work of transformation. And, of course, who wouldn’t love the image of this man drinking the sacramental water like it was a shot! Vivid and powerful and evocative of so many things—new life, eagerness, desperation, thrills, transformation.
Kevin Klein’s Loved Ones is a beautiful, lovely witness of what it means to live as a Latter-day Saint. His poems root themselves in the realities of our mortal existence and garnish those realities with the transcendent ones that his religious convictions insist are there. While the poems are often light and joyful, they don’t shy away from the pain and loss that accompany mortality, imbued throughout with an insistent hope. Loved Ones is a gentle testimony delivered with a wry smile and deep eyes reflecting the suffering inherent to life, yet continuing to twinkle with delight.