Shade 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.

“This book has been made with fierce attention. MaKshya Tolbert cuts into a history of Southern placemaking, sounding out harmonic complexities. The poetry here—this model of placekeeping—’seethes between our hands.’ Have you wondered what it takes to stay in a place, to push against the romance of escape? Shade is a place is now my guide to the steadying beauties and challenges of such a life. To know what belonging feels like, walk with her, look with her, & listen with her. Each tree stands or leans, depending on itself and its neighbors. ‘Each bosque houses song.’”
— G.E. Patterson, author of To & From