Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Jack Hirschman’s "Made in Haiti" is a searing political poem that critiques economic exploitation, dictatorship, and imperialism through the symbolic weight of a manufactured baseball. Hirschman uses this simple object—a ball—to encapsulate the entire oppressive system under which Haitian workers labor, linking their suffering to the broader struggles of resistance and revolution.

The opening lines, "Made in Haiti / the ball / so much depends upon," immediately recall William Carlos Williams’ "The Red Wheelbarrow," a poem that emphasizes the significance of ordinary objects in shaping human experience. But Hirschman’s invocation takes a sharper, political turn, using the ball to expose the intersection of capitalism, oppression, and global consumption. This baseball, an object of entertainment and national pastime, is not just a piece of sports equipment—it is the product of exploitation. It carries within it the hands, sweat, and suffering of the poor black woman who stitches it together for $2.60 a day, a wage so minuscule it highlights the stark economic disparity that defines Haiti’s place in global markets.

Hirschman does not leave this economic critique in abstraction. He connects the woman who makes the ball to the violent history of political repression in Haiti. The pregnant worker shot by Duvalier goons is a chilling image of brutality, suggesting not just economic but physical violence against the working class. Her murder sparks further repression, as those who protest in Gonaïves are spray-shot, a phrase that conveys both the indiscriminate nature of the violence and the idea of human bodies being treated as disposable. Hirschman reminds us that under the Duvalier dictatorship, all other political parties were outlawed, meaning that the people had no institutional means of resistance—only their labor, their protests, and their ultimate revolutionary potential.

The second half of the poem shifts to the spectacle of a stadium packed with forty thousand people—equal to the entire population of Gonaïves—cheering as the ball, the very product of exploitation, is used in play. This powerful irony underscores how global sports and entertainment are often built on the backs of workers whose lives are marked by oppression and suffering. The game, which should be a source of unity and pride, is tainted by the economic realities of its production. The Made in Haiti label on the ball is more than a country of origin; it is a brand of suffering, a marker of the exploited workers who create goods they will never afford to enjoy.

Hirschman’s final metaphor—describing the sisal inside the ball as a population in prison—reinforces the suffocating conditions of life under dictatorship and economic subjugation. The layers of the ball mirror the layers of oppression: beneath the surface, there is a hungry weeping that literally / beggars the imagination. This phrase refuses to let the reader turn away from the reality of starvation, imprisonment, and despair that so many Haitians endure. But Hirschman does not leave the poem in hopelessness. At its core, beneath the stitches of imperialism, there is revolutionary struggle, an explosive force waiting to be unleashed.

The concluding lines envision Haiti’s future as fair as its wondrous people, asserting that the island’s beauty lies not just in its landscape but in its resilient population. This final statement transforms the poem from critique to prophecy: the suffering and labor of the Haitian people will not be in vain. Just as the ball moves within the game, so too does history move toward justice, and Hirschman insists that revolution is not just inevitable—it is imminent.

"Made in Haiti" is a poem of anger and solidarity, a condemnation of global capitalism’s indifference to the lives of workers and a celebration of the revolutionary spirit that persists despite oppression. Hirschman masterfully weaves together the imagery of sports, labor, and political struggle, demonstrating how even the smallest, most unassuming object—a baseball—can carry the weight of an entire nation’s history and its fight for freedom.

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