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Date Available
9-19-9999
Year of Publication
2026
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
College
Arts and Sciences
Department/School/Program
English
Faculty
Shauna Morgan
Faculty
Andrew Milward
Abstract
Girl, Crooked in the Mouth is a full-length poetry collection that continually tries to define and redefine love for a speaker endlessly coming to know herself. Focusing on a speaker named The Girl, the included poems grapple with self-worth, unrequited love, obsession, and broadly, mental health struggles—seeking answers to her most unanswerable questions. She centers her romantic (and sometimes fantasy-only) encounters with men through time, pointedly speaking to a “you” that is, at once, one guy and also every boy and man she’s ever yearned for. But these poems are not about the men. Rather, they are examinations of past experiences through which The Girl comes to understand herself, her body, and her mind in a time when young women are at once being told to de-center men and prioritize finding love.
Keywords: mental health, neurodivergence, love, adolescence, relationships.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2026.162
Archival?
Archival
Recommended Citation
Larson-Baldwin, Mia, "Girl, Crooked in The Mouth" (2026). Theses and Dissertations--English. 199.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/199
