Philip Carter’s South by North is an autobiographical odyssey, a book-length narrative executed via a series of exquisitely wrought lyrics. Many of these lyrics could literally be set to music.

Carter adopts the persona of a Southern, folksy troubadour. Despite the humor, the self- deprecation, the irony of this persona, the poems of South by North are serious forays into nostalgia, self-examination, the nature of love, assessment of a life well-lived and inklings of mortality.

I rarely describe a poet’s work as “beautiful,” unless it applies, yet quite a few poems in this volume deserve that appellation—“Schenectady” and “Mother; Love” for instance. I might also add “Midnight Near Monkey Hill,” which evokes Housman or Yeats yearning for youth and the usual, innocent ardor it ensures.

—Dr. Louis Gallo