Meet Me in the Flames by Greg Jones
Wild Ink Publishing LLC (October 2024)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Born in 1970, Greg Jones grew up, in his opinion, in the pinnacle of all things. The best films, music, comic books and those fantastic ’80s horror novels. No matter where his mind wandered, it eventually found it’s way back to something with a monster in it. He spent his adolescence hunched over a drawing table, occasionally writing and living his life in pursuit of personal creative goals. In his current role at the local library, he is surrounded by books all day and inspired daily to keep creating his horror inspired poetry. Meet Me in the Flames is his first published work.
In interviews, Greg admits that he came to poetry later in life. After suffering a tendon injury in his arm, Greg took up folk singing and songwriting. However, being a lifelong fan of horror, his talents eventually led him to darker subjects, and his lyrics became horror poetry. He set himself a goal of writing one hundred poems, which have been collected into Meet Me in the Flames. Not satisfied with that accomplishment, Jones went ahead and illustrated the book himself.
As a miscellany of horror poetry, especially one that was written with a specific number of poems in mind, Meet Me in the Flames is exactly what it says it is. None of these poems are connected or thematic, so it very much reads like a sampler. As expected with any sampler, readers will experience a mixed variety of poetic styles and topics. Jones’s experience with singing and songwriting are apparent in many of these poems, as they are rhymed and metered with other lyrical elements. For example, the poem “Corruption of the Dolls” begins
They started out so loved and so fair
With rosy, pink cheeks and light golden hair
Sleeping at night in the warmth of your arms
Eyes ever watchful to keep you from harm
The images here are basic and straightforward, and the narrative progresses over fourteen stanzas of similar rhymes. It’s a simple narrative poem with all the hallmarks of childhood horror, and very much like the rest of Jones’s rhymed poems.
Jones also experiments with free verse in his goal of one hundred poems. As with his rhymed poems, the images are stripped down to their simplist forms, allowing the reader to really fill in the details from the shadows. For example, “the attention of the fly” begins
I’ve caught the attention of the fly,
beloved filth
I welcome her,
her erratic dance
She rubs her hands together
Eager
Ravenous
A thousand eyes survey me
The poem, and many of the free verse poems, are similar, with short lines of no more than two or three words, attempting to allow the words and images to stand on their own and asking the reader to make imaginative leaps and connections to discern meaning.
Meet Me in the Flames by Greg Jones is a collection of poems written over a period of healing. None of these poems have been published previously or curated in any journals or magazines, so they are all brand new to readers and the world. With a mixed bag of both formal and free verse poetry, there is sure to be something in Meet Me in the Flames that will appeal to most horror readers.
