His obituary in The Sydney Morning Herald stated that "he followed his own poetic path with little regard for the niceties of a literary career."
[4] David Malouf wrote that Harris understands that "poetry is one of the last remaining activities in which reverence is paid, in which the holiness of things is recognised in a way that may be essential to the fullest expression of what we are.
Poems such as Do I think we could have won, Signs & Wonders and O'Hara show a longing for softness and a relief from despair in himself and others, an eye for the underdog.
Events and localities often frame or stimulated his poetry, for example New York, Sydney and country New South Wales.
Isaiah by Kerosene Lantern Light from The Cloud Passes Over has many of Harris' themes: the memory of a friend, the locality (a tent), the contrast of the mild and the nasty (heresy hunter), the book as a thing that demands response.
Cycles also gave Harris an opportunity to deal with less autobiographical material and less parochial or obscure subjects than in his vignette-like shorter poems as found in The cloud passes over.
In his final book, these cycles were: In the article on Australia in The Oxford Guide to Contemporary World Literature[7] Peter Craven says of Harris that he: wrote distinguished work and, at the end of his life, a masterpiece Jane, Interlinear and Other Poems.Poet Jill Jones wrote[8] concerning neglected masterpieces: And poetry?