Shortlisted for the 2024 ARTHUR SMITH POETRY PRIZETitanfall explores grief and relationships, becoming and dying. The book navigates questions of identity, mortality, and politics in places tinged by the mythical and theological. In the "Christ-haunted" tradition of Flannery O'Connor's South, the speaker of the poems guides the reader on a hero's journey out of Appalachia and into a metaphysical wildland where choices and personalities have cosmic consequences. Grounded in American and German literary traditions and steeped in popular culture and world events, these poems are by turns harrowing, hopeful, and darkly humorous.