“A novel of poems,” in the words of Hernán Bravo Varela, 50 States. 13 Contemporary Poets from the United States is a polyphonic essay on the multiple forms of American poetry, an anthology composed of poems and interviews where reality and fiction blur to the point of blurring the boundaries between genres. The result makes clear to what extent translation allows a multiplicity of perspectives to coexist in the mind of a single author. “Perhaps translation is a way of showing what was always there, even though it no longer existed,” says Zaidenwerg, and from there arise the essential questions of this book: What is a name? What is a poetics? Where does the poet end and the poem begin? If literature is a game of inquiry in which we don't know what is true, at least we can be sure that everything shown in 50 States is true.