The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Hayden, Robert. "Middle Passage” from Collected Poems (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1985).

Note that parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

"Middle Passage" is a three-section poem published for the first time in the 1940s about the slave trade in the Americas and the mutiny aboard the Amistad ship as it voyaged from Cuba. The poem describes the brutality of slavery and the dehumanization of the African people within the system as well as the religious hypocrisy of white slave owners and sailors who contribute to the system’s existence.

The speaker tracks the conditions on the ship and the hopeless mood that pervades the environment in the first section before moving to an account from a retired slaver in the second section. Finally, the poem’s third section focuses on the mutiny from the perspective of Cinquez, the hero of the insurrection.