All About Love by Kemmerick 'Bing Bong' Harrison

     

        Sometimes a book isn’t so much about the book as it is about the context of that book. All About Love is a book of poems by Kemmerick ‘Bing Bong’ Harrison, a Barbadian poet and joke writer. While on vacation, I met Harrison on the resort hawking his books. I passed him by one night and he caught me peeking at his books but we were running late for dinner, so I said I’d take a look later. The next afternoon, he was setting up his booth and he has quite the memory because he recognized me and beckoned me over.

Bing Bong told me to pick a number and then recited, from memory, the poem written on the page of the number I said. He has his books memorized and gave very dramatic readings of his poems and jokes. When I read his poems, I can hear his voice and remember his delivery. He’s a really charismatic guy, even though I don’t really share his humour.

I think the same is true for his poems. All About Love is a collection about love of different kinds: romantic, familial, religious, lustful, and so on. The collection is tonally disparate; there’s some comedically intended poems about unfaithful partners or gold-digging women presented alongside pleas for the government to against incest and for people to protect themselves from AIDS. There’s a sincerity to the collection that gives it a certain charm, but the poems have the sing-songy rhyme scheme of a budding high school poet. The rhyme scheme sometimes forces him into awkward line constructions. 

The target audience is almost definitely not me. The collection gives Chicken Soup for the Lover’s Soul vibes, but I have a soft spot for Harrison because he’s such a charming guy. 

There’s one thing that I think is really interesting about the collection and that I’ll ask Bing Bong about next time I see him is that there are two poems that reference wrong number phone calls that ended in long-term love. “Blind Date” establishes a dialogue between Frederick and not-Juliette. Frederick calls the wrong number and then really hits it off with the woman. The poem “Reflections” reprises the idea: someone meets someone new, get their number, calls, and then dialed the number wrong and the poem ends: “Now I’m old, beginning to gray / I often reflect upon that day / ‘Twas because of that phone call / I have you, my kids and all” (40). I really wonder if those poems are rooted in truth.

Well, Bing Bong, if I ever run into you again, I’ll ask. In the meantime, happy reading!