Saint Ghetto of the Loans

One of the most influential, if rarely seen, visual poetry books of the post-war avant-garde, Pomerand's Lettrist masterwork elaborates a psychogeographic story of the bohemian Parisian neighbourhood of Saint-Germain-des-Pres through punning prose-poems and dazzling, rebus-like 'metagraphics' on facing pages. Pomerand's Saint Ghetto of the Loans (1950) is one of the earliest, and perhaps most formidably sustained examples of the Lettrist's engagement with verbo-visual expression. This expanded, bilingual edition also includes the book's original preface by the filmmaker Jacques Baratier, the author's idiosyncratic resume of his published works, a contextualizing afterword by Michael Kasper, as well as a complete bibliography and filmography, which reveals the breadth and scope of Pomerand's Lettrist activities.