Edward M. Bury

Post modern poets furiously discarded many established literary conventions and relied more on a narrative technique to distance their work from the philosophical and intellectual enlightened movement and the Modernist movement that followed. For the uninitiated, these poetic works could prove intimidating, confusing and even non-nonsensical.  I can speak from personal experience, as a wide spectrum of post modern and contemporary poetry was the center of the ENGL 540: Seminar in Modern and Contemporary Literature, the fourth course in my quest to earn my Master’s degree in English. To complete my course requirements, I had to build a thesis on the works assigned, draft an abstract, and of course, research and write a paper (this time complete with an annotated bibliography.)  My paper was centered on the contention by some modern black poets that the concept of “blackness” has become a commodity today. A work by poet and writer Douglas Kearney was examined. The paper, The Commodification of “Blackness” and Poetry Presented as Propaganda, proved challenging; but I gained a much better understanding on the direction literature had made.

Observances of a neighborhood in transition. That summarizes the subject and scope of an essay I wrote and presented during Fall 2017 as part of ENGL 574: Non-Fiction Writing Workshop, the course I completed in December. The essay centered on the Avondale neighborhood of Chicago, where we’ve lived since 2000, when we purchased a modest two-flat in what then was still a work-class community, sometimes plagued by crime but far from being blighted and beyond renewal. Avondale has evolved — gentrified in many ways — a process I called “greening.”

The essay is titled, The “Greening” of Avondale, and the work includes some original images and lyrics to a song, “When Will I Leave Chicago.”

Real estate and transportation remain passions of mine, especially on a professional level. Last month, I had the honor of contributing an article to the Summer 2017 issue of Commercial Connections, a publication of the National Association of REALTORS(R). The piece covered transit oriented development (TOD), a practice of building multifamily or mixed-use properties adjacent or close to rapid transit, rail or bus stations.

For the article, Industry Trends: Transit Oriented Development Driving Investment, I interviewed two commercial real estate experts and conducted some primary research.