What emotion is the author trying to evoke in this poem?

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Barbara K

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Empathy. The poet is taking an old photograph of an anonymous girl out of some long forgotten history and breathing life into it by emphasizing the human connection between the reader and the girl. The girl is not history but a miraculous manifestation of eternal divine creation. The remote image becomes intimate and human.
 
"Photograph of the girl" Sharon olds
The girl sits on the hard ground
the dry pan of Russia in the drought
of 1921, Stunned.
eyes closed. Mouth open
raw hot wind blowing
sand in her face hunger and puberty are
taking her together. She leans on a sack,
layers of clothes fluttering in the heat
the new radius of her arm curved
she cannot be not beautiful, but she is
starving. each day she grows thinner, and her bones
grow longer, porous. The caption says
she is going to starve to death that winter
with millions of others.Deep in her body
The ovaries let out her first eggs
Golden as drops of grain..
 
Sorrow for the loss of a girl just reaching womanhood, newly able to create life, but dying before her chance to contribute to humanity is realized.
 
Sorrow for the loss of a girl just reaching womanhood, newly able to create life, but dying before her chance to contribute to humanity is realized.
 
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