Advance Praise for Shade is a place:
“Shade is a place consciously extends the American tradition of documentary poetics, plaited here with a Black feminist, ecopoetic vision distinctly Tolbert’s own. ‘Tell the trees I’m sorry / for taking so long to see them,’ she writes, casting us in the brilliant shade of her devotion to the world, and illumining even its darkest reaches with loving regard. This is simply an extraordinary book.” —Maggie Millner, author of Couplets
“Where to find relief in a city that by design thwarts your thriving? How to heal in a place with a history of harm? MaKshya Tolbert brings these questions to downtown Charlottesville’s mature willow oaks, 'sick and stressed and alive, strung from this land.' Acutely attuned to these trees, Tolbert gets involved in their care as a way to study survival under duress. 'A green book for walkers' and a Black book of nature, Shade is a place is above all 'a compass of what matters.' Let it guide you.” —Brian Teare, author of Poem Bitten by a Man
“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.mTo 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
“Tolbert's quietly moving collection brings us ‘leaf by leaf’ into a local history whose most telling and compelling archive is rooted in the ground. The poems record her relationships with the oaks, willows, and redbuds planted in Charlottesville's Downtown Mall, and with the community of people who join her for the ‘shade walks’ she takes to deepen her understanding of what these trees give and need. Writing in the traditions of both Black Nature and Black Feminist Thought, Tolbert uses simple yet powerful language to open our eyes to the life cycle of trees in her small Southern city's ecology, inviting us repeatedly to ‘look up.’” —Evie Shockley, author of suddenly we
“MaKshya Tolbert's Shade is a place feels like a surreal commentary on clearings. First, a clearing in the Toni Morrison sense, a necessary gathering site of deep renewal. Also, a reflection on clear-cuttings of trees, entire forests, neighborhoods, what is left behind in the absence of shade. And what becomes possible. As the lyric says, ‘I saw the tree into a book / read its log / simple language’ breathing, opening ‘diffuse-porous’ creating soft tension, layers. Sprawling throughout these lovely poems and prose, there is a pulsating ecosystem, a careful reforestation. Or, slow serene beauty, like the delicate bark of a rainbow eucalyptus.” —fahima ife, author of Septet for the Luminous Ones
“National Poetry Series winner Tolbert debuts with an ambitious meditation on the experience of shade, trees, and walking the historic Charlottesville Mall in Virginia. . . . A strong debut, at home in any collection of modern American poetry.” —Library Journal
