The Birth of a Widow: Collected Poems

by Kathie Giorgio

88 pages, Paperback

Published February 24, 2026

About the author

KATHIE GIORGIO is the author of a total of fifteen books: eight novels, two story collections, an essay collection, and four poetry collections. She’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in fiction and poetry and awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, the Silver Pen Award for Literary Excellence, the Pencraft Award for Literary Excellence, and the Eric Hoffer Award In Fiction. Her poem “Light” won runner-up in the 2021 Rosebud Magazine Poetry Prize, and her work has also been incorporated into many visual art and musical events. Kathie is the director and founder of AllWriters’ Workplace & Workshop LLC, an international creative writing studio. She lives with her husband, mystery writer Michael Giorgio, and their daughter Olivia, in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Three of her adult children, Christopher, Andy, and Olivia, live close by, along with her solo granddaughter, Maya Mae. One adult child, Katie, has wandered off to Louisiana and lives among the mathematicians and alligators.

Reviews

[Ashley Kanazawich · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Birth of a Widow is somber and raw and hard to read in the most necessary way. Kathie Giorgio's loss was sudden and tragic and this collection takes you through her first year as a widow in her own words, written as the grief arrived.

Reading it was incredibly grounding. There is no distance between the reader and the pain. You are in it with her from the very first poem. Her writing is so raw and so emotionally honest that you can feel her vulnerability on every page, and that vulnerability is exactly what makes this collection so powerful.

The heartbeat of this collection is the truth that no moment is ever guaranteed. That loss arrives without warning and we are thrust into grief forced to figure out who we are and what life looks like without the person we held dear. Giorgio sits inside that truth unflinchingly and brings her readers with her.

Recommended for readers who can resonate with the pain and growth of real life.

[E.A. Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is a powerful reading experience with a variety of poetry styles exploring grief through its many facets of pain. I'm glad I read this even though I wish that Kathie never needed to write upon such a subject. This poignant collection of poetry is going to live in my brain forever.

[Bev · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Please note: I received a free copy in exchange for my honest review.)

My Review

Kathie Giorgio’s poetry and essay in her book The Birth of a Widow, deeply moved me. She wrote the poems after her husband Michael’s death on June 19th, 2024. Though she said she couldn’t write a how-to manual on grief, she has effectively given us a roadmap of her own loss and journey through grief. And this can provide comfort (it did for me)

My husband is still living but many of her poems touched the grief I still feel over the deaths of my older brother and my parents.

An early poem, “This Widow Thing”, written just a couple of months after Michael’s death, really zeroes in on the expectations of what a widow faces.

So much feeling and anguish fill the poems, yet the love she feels still for Michael and her marriage shine through strongly.

Giorgio’s poem “My Language” moved me. The repetition of her line “His death is changing my language” is so effective. These lines say what grief feels like (and what I still feel):

“His life is now my third person past tense

But my grief is still very much

in first person.”

I felt every poem and I really can’t name a favourite. They all were.

I highly recommend Kathie Giorgio’s powerful poetry book The Birth of a Widow. It was a 5* read for me.

[Linda Schueler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not a widow, but I am no stranger to grief, so I found many of these poems, including list poems, haikus, and prose poems, relatable. Giorgio touches upon many subjects, such as clearing out her husband’s closet with its many secrets and some memories (the cardboard sign from the first time they met really touched me) in “Closet”, or how death changes language in “My Language”, or how Giorgio tries to figure out the expectation of being a widow in “This Widow Thing”. Interwoven throughout is Giorgio’s bitterness and longing. There is much repetition, but that fits right in as Giorgio tries to figure out things. So many observations stayed with me, but the line that struck me the most was this one from “Compensation”: “As if any dollar amount could bring back what I’ve lost.” As Giorgio notes, this isn’t a how-to on grief, as she doesn’t think this is possible, but still, knowing that someone can bring to words thoughts on grief that I have been unable to express, is comforting.