This article is based on this Dutch article of Martijn Benders
What came before: During my first encounter with the mysterious poet Jabik Veenbaas, I stumbled upon a remarkable piece of prose on the website of the ‘writing school’. Two gigantic language errors jumped out at me – as if the Dutch language itself resisted him. My interest was piqued, not so much by the content, but by the sheer clumsiness of it.
“Deze bundel heeft een intiem karakter,” screams the back cover of Kamermuziek. It’s immediately clear that Willem Thies, his colleague at the writing school and literary pillar, is allowed to regurgitate the exact same words in a very short excerpt: “Werkelijk aangrijpend.” As if these accolades are supplied by a shared text generator, where authenticity is thrown under the train of commerce.
What also stands out – and here the cat is out of the bag – is that Veenbaas seems to be the only poet in the Netherlands who has ever caught the strict attention of Elsevier. At first glance, not shocking, until you realize that Veenbaas is a neocon who praises Theodore Dalrymple as if he were the second coming of Plato, while attacking Adorno as if he had personally spilled his coffee. Adorno, the intellectual refugee who found a safe haven in the US, got the full brunt of Veenbaas’s critique: “How dare you criticize America? You should have been grateful!” – an ideological slap in the face to anyone who dares say anything about the ocean without crossing their toes. One of the sparse reviews of Veenbaas as a ‘philosopher’ turns out to be decidedly unenthusiastic.
Well, as I mentioned yesterday, I’m setting aside the ‘philosopher’ Veenbaas for now. But what about the poet? I had never heard of him as a poet, and it’s at least strange that he suddenly pops up in the middle of the Dutch Foundation for Literature, like a sudden hangover after a pleasant evening. How Christian is Veenbaas, you ask? Well, let’s say: very Christian. His poems exude an intimacy, but it’s the kind of intimacy you’d prefer to avoid. It feels as if you’re stuck in a stuffy room for three-quarters of an hour with an excruciatingly dull figure, who is convinced that the most colorless anecdotes about his life deserve to be called ‘poetry’, without a hint of linguistic brilliance.
Yes, that intimacy is there, but in the wrong way. Oedipal-Frisian, they call it, like those frugal Frisians who live in gnome houses because they wanted to save on bricks. And Veenbaas, at sixty-five, is still talking about mommy and daddy, as if he’s still clinging to mom’s apron. However intimate and ‘truly moving’ that may be, you’d prefer to escape this Oedipal nightmare as quickly as possible.
Alright, on to the ‘poetry’. As a mycologist, you immediately stumble upon this brainteaser:
HERFSTDAG
Het regent de hele dag
ik kruip in mijn hol steeds dieper
steek ik mijn schimmeldraden
in de vochtige bodem
Er duiken heksenkringen op
klasgenoten lang geleden
(…)
Mycelia ‘pierce’ the ground. And then fairy rings appear, apparently made up of classmates. Was Veenbaas bullied at school? It evokes some pity. But that pity quickly vanishes when he speaks of these classmates in a tone bordering on contempt:
De een is tegenwoordig gitarist
‘speelt ook achtergrondmuziek’
de andere evangelist te Almelo.
And there’s where it goes wrong. Veenbaas, who still considers himself the wisest, seems to forget that ridiculing old classmates doesn’t evoke sympathy. Even if it’s intended as some sort of public confession of regret, it backfires. His words feel like a thinly veiled form of bullying – wrapped in the vague guise of poetry.
And then comes the climax:
De enige verbinding ben ik
een grijzende man die nog grammofoonplaten draait
luistert ook naar de krassen.
Veenbaas, the sole connection in his own universe, master of the solipsistic world he inhabits. While he listens to scratches on vinyl, he seems unaware of the irony that vinyl is more hip than ever. And we, poor readers, are left with the feeling that we are witnessing a man stuck in the past – dragging us into his stifling world, and the reader? No, the reader doesn’t exist, because then the verb would be ‘luister’ and the poem might gain some semblance of sympathy.
What remains now is the image of a man clinging to his outdated ideas, afraid of change, and still not over his childhood traumas. Or, as Veenbaas would put it: “The only connection is me.”
Let’s move on after these introductory thoughts. In my first encounter with Veenbaas’ poetry, despite the initial interest sparked by his awkward prose, the engagement quickly turned into a laborious task. His poem HITTEGOLF, for example, explains what a heatwave is, in case we’ve forgotten:
De heetste dag van het jaar
ijsblokjes niet aan te slepen
waar is schaduw
Thank you, Jabik, for this enlightenment. Without you, we wouldn’t know what to do during a heatwave. Ice cubes, check. Shade, check. This is psy-borg poetry at its best, the kind that makes your brain creak from sheer boredom. And as if that weren’t enough, he also has a poem about snow, in which he repeats the word “snow” four times. As if we might forget what snow is otherwise.
Thus, the forty-five minutes it takes to slog through this collection pass quickly. You’ve learned quite a lot: you now know what a heatwave is (in case you ever need that information), you’re aware that humans are the longest breastfeeding species in the entire animal kingdom – a characteristic we largely owe to our inescapable family structures. And as the cherry on top, you’ve learned that masks are actually shiny shields, worn by brave corona knights who, like neocon kindred spirit Jordan Peterson, excel in the heroic ‘cleaning up of their room’. Indeed, all packed into a mere forty-five pages – time flies, truly.
And if you thought you could look up a review of this collection to see your opinions confirmed, alas. A review of these masterpieces has yet to appear, probably because TZUM is currently functioning at a snail’s pace. But remember the name, Jabik Veenbaas, for this is the man who distributes the literary funds, at least for another two years. After that, we might look forward to another chancellor or preacher who perhaps understands the art of dragging us even deeper into the hell of endless prose. But let’s hope he doesn’t, like Adorno, forget to maintain the precarious balance of gratitude – otherwise, he too will quickly become persona non grata among the Christian brothers of the Dutch Foundation for Literature.
In any case, my own gratitude is there. Grateful that as a possessed writer I have been able to digest this selected trojan-hungry poetry. An experience you must place somewhere between self-flagellation and masochism, all while I – as a despised servant of Beelzebub – was dragged through the hell of Jabik’s universe. But oh, what is a sinner without his trials? And what is poetry without the memory of the mask-knight we all so deeply wish to forget? It’s all endearing, certainly, and unforgettable, but unfortunately in exactly the wrong way.
Martijn Benders, 22-08-2024
