Shade Is a Place - Makshya Tolbert

From National Poetry Series winner MaKshya Tolbert, comes a lyrical debut that explores the social and ecological relief trees can provide within the entanglements of place, property, urban planning, and racial terror in Charlottesville, Virginia \nShade 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 inner life and ongoing questions. 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. \nFrom National Poetry Series winner MaKshya Tolbert, a lyrical debut that explores the social and ecological relief trees can provide within the entanglements of place, property, urban planning, and racial terror in Charlottesville, Virginia \n \nShade 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.\n