In 1981, the poet Latif Harris was working at — and living above — Browser Books in its former location a block up from the current store on Fillmore Street. Harris was behind the front counter when, he says, “the most beautiful woman in the world” walked into the store.
They did what you do in a bookstore: talked about books, with Harris recommending something he was reading at the time. After she left, he hesitated briefly before chasing her down the street. He asked her to dinner and, to his surprise, she accepted. The most beautiful woman in the world is Alpha Gardner, and she and Harris have been together now for 34 years.
Sitting in the living room of their flat in the Lower Haight as they recount these events, I am struck by the profound resonance both for Harris and for me. My husband and I have come to visit them on an unseasonably warm Saturday in late March — the husband who worked with Harris when he returned briefly to Browser Books in the late 1990s, the husband I met when I was hired to work at Browser and he opened the store early to train me.
Harris’ own artworks, Joseph Cornell-like boxes housing collaged miniature worlds, are displayed on a shelf, with volumes of Beat poetry both prominent and obscure lining the shelves underneath. The two front rooms of the flat are taken by a Buddhist altar and an atelier where Gardner assembles art quilts. She is also a photographer, as her photo, “Heart in the Redwood,” on the new book’s cover, attests.
Harris first arrived in San Francisco from the suburbs of Los Angeles in 1958, when the Navy posted him to Treasure Island. By 1960, he was living at 444 Columbus Avenue, above Stella Pastry. That was the year he met LaVigne, who introduced him to John Weiners’ The Hotel Wentley Poems, still one of his greatest influences. A slim and relatively clean-cut Harris was dropped smack into the middle of a North Beach that those of us born too late in the dying millennium can only dream of: a Beat Eden.
But he didn’t stay there. Harris’ wild ride would take him back to L.A. to found the literary journal Ante, to Berkeley to drive Jack Spicer to the last reading Spicer ever gave, to New Mexico with Robert Creeley where his first book was published, to the University of Essex where he did graduate work in Sociology of Literature among the Marxists. But between trips to continental Europe, Java, Indonesia and, more recently, Bhutan, Harris always returned to the Bay Area, the site of his first real literary awakening.
In 2006, Browser Books Publishing, under the editorial guidance of store owner and publisher Stephen Damon, put out Harris’ collection, A Bodhisattva’s Busted Truth. As the title suggests, it focuses heavily on his practice of Tibetan (Vajrayana) Buddhism, including his own interpretation of the Tibetan dohas or received sacred texts.
Harris’ new book brings his career full circle in both content and delivery. It is published by Duende Press in Placitas, which put out his first book 50 years ago. Barter Within the Bark of Trees: First Will & Testament, Poems of Aging and Memory is an elegy to a literary life fully lived by a poet who refuses to go gently into the fertile ground he has dug for himself. Its scope befits a poet who considers his work to be one long continuum, rather than a series of discrete collections. As Jack Hirschman puts it in his forward to the book: “ ‘Titanloose’ is what I call Latif Harris’ poetry. A play on a titan among us and at the same time a writing that’s ‘tight’ and ‘loose.’ ”
That Harris continues to contribute his idiosyncratic, compassionate voice to the din of literary San Francisco — and that we on Fillmore Street still hear him — is its own kind of living poetry.
— Erin C. Messer
This article first appeared in New Fillmore monthly paper, May 2015, Books Section.
Buy BARTER WITHIN THE BARK OF TREES here.
Latif Harris writes,
“Have been writing poetry since the age of 12. Got to North Beach in 1959 and met almost all of the poets who had a connection to the Beat and S.F. Renaissance movements. Studied with Robert Creeley 1965-68 and with his recommendation received a Graduate Fellowship in Sociology of Literature at U. of Essex in England 1968-69. Was founding editor and publisher of ANTE a graphics and literary magazine 1963; edited and published BEATITUDE GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY 1959-2009 a huge compilation of poetry, art, photography, essays and letters from those influenced by or participated in poetry scene in San Francisco. Published 12 books of poetry, most recently BARTER WITHIN THE BARTER OF TREES, Duende Press, N.M. 2015. Took refuge with His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche in 1976. Buddhism has been central to my life since that time. Have done many extended retreats, received Vajrayana teachings from H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche, Lama Gyaltrul Rinpoche, Lama Tarchin Rinpoche and Kabjay Thinley Norbu Rinpoche. Have made pilgrimages to Nepal and Bhutan.
My new book BARTER WITHIN THE BARTER OF TREES contains earlier poems which presage the long poem in Section Two which is about aging, memories, dreams and was written in 2014 as I was beginning to feel that “lost” feeling that plagues many older people. As a poet and a Buddhist, it was a kind of open practice to thwart the demons of early dementia through writing about as openly and honestly as possible. It is literally a journal of the year 2014 that ends with news of Robin Williams death on the very day I was closing the poem in its final form. The article included here was written by Erin Messer who has recently become a part of my life. She talks about our home and a curious karmic event and great blessing chronicling how I met my wife at a bookstore 35 years ago.”
Leave a Reply