From National Poetry Series winner MaKshya Tolbert, a startlingly original debut (Maggie Millner) that meanders toward possibilities of arboreal relief among entanglements of place, property, and urban planning in Charlottesville, VirginiaShade is a place meanders east–west along Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall, seeking a Black sense of place at the pace of stressed shade and street trees, the mall’s architectural history, and the speaker’s ongoing questions and reflections. The collection of poems is a moving invitation to open one’s attention by looking up, down, and always within. Through lyric walking poems (tree walks and shade walks) and Bashō-style travelogue, Shade is a place unfolds as much through arboreal life as through one’s inner life—sometimes alone, sometimes with others, and always among turning trees. | Shade is a place by MaKshya Tolbert, Paperback | Indigo Chapters