New Bandera resident and author Barbara Van Driel stopped by the Kronkosky Library in Bandera to speak to a small group of literary enthusiasts about her new book of poetry, More July.
More July marks Van Driel’s second published work. Van Driel wrote her previous book, It Never Happened: FBI Negligence and Duplicity Revealed From Inside Out, as a memoir of her ten years in the FBI.
More July grew out of the writings and musings that she had over the course of her lifetime.
“This book was written because I had written poetry over the years, and I wanted to preserve it,” Van Driel stated.
Love is the central theme of More July, according to Van Driel. She attributes her theme to her deep faith and desire to portray the different aspects of love in a Christian life.
While not overtly evangelical, this book could be for any person of faith, or it could just be considered “love stories.”
Van Driel states that her poems are musings about the different states of love.
The title of the book of poetry, More July, comes from thoughts on the poem I Am No Lazy Lover by Richard Novak. Novak’s fourth stanza ends with the phrase “each day that sings our love is more July.”
Van Driel took a great deal of time talking about her writing process and how each poem had an individual concept behind it.
She spoke about how she created the concept behind her poem “The Gimlet Eye.”
“I was a music major in college and had written a lot of lyrics,” she said.
“The Gimlet Eye” came to Van Driel while riding on a train during her FBI years. She reveals that she had developed the key thought of that poem through extensive reading of a journal called “The Gimlet Eye.”
While Van Driel’s poetry seems intense, it is also verbally complicated and introspective.
“After I got out of the bureau, I began traveling. I met this man in Russia who had been an invalid since his teens, and he used to say, “’et love decide.’” That idea was the kernel of a thought that created a poem by that same name in her book.
Van Driel has drawn from personal experiences and from literary analysis to create a book that is intriguing in its choice of vocabulary and reflective in its concepts.
Van Driel credits her father and her maternal grandmother as the inspirations for this book and are the most important people in her life. Her father strongly encouraged Van Driel academically.
As a young woman, Van Driel had trouble settling on a college after high school. Living in New Jersey, she gravitated to New York University but “it was just horrible.”
She quit NYU and then she went to Kansas with a cousin on a business trip.
She finally wound up at Pittsburg State University in Kansas studying pre-law. She met Louis Lee, her mentor, who encouraged her to try for the FBI, who ended up successfully recruiting her.
After 10 years’ service in the FBI, Van Driel retired and pursued other interests as well as traveling around the country. She moved to Bandera after reading about the attraction of the Texas Hill Country.
The Bandera Kronkosky Library has a copy of Van Driel’s book of poetry, More July, for checkout.
Her first book, It Never Happened, is available from Amazon
