Surrealism and absurdity, fantasy and fiction, images come together in a variety of combinations. The range can be unbelievable: from Giotto’s painting of St. Francis Preaching to the Birds to a contemporary sculptural assemblage of a spoon and teacup lined with fur!¹

“I like to do just like the rest, I like my sugar sweet
But guarding fumes and making haste
It ain’t my cup of meat. . . .”

“. . . Ev’rybody’s ’neath the trees
Feeding pigeons on a limb
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
All the pigeons gonna run to him.”²

In one of his most important collections of poetry, the author and editor Robert Bly takes a look at this literature from so many angles. The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart³ takes its title from the absurd poem “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” by William Butler Yeats:

“Now that my ladder’s gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
in that foul rag and bone shop of the heart.”⁴

Included in the “Zaniness” section of this collection, Bly describes a song by Bob Dylan titled “The Mighty Quinn!” Packed full of silliness and surrealism, this mighty Eskimo is here to save us all.

There is a subtle source for this story: an early short documentary film of 1922 from the Museum of Modern Art Film Library titled “Nanook of the North.” This film circulated around New York and beyond in the 1960’s, even making it to the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore for a film series.

Several sources also point to the movie “The Savage Innocents” starring Anthony Quinn, playing the part of an Eskimo, as the inspiration for this song.

“Ev’rybody’s building the big ships and the boats
Some are building monuments
Others, jotting down notes
Ev’rybody’s in despair
Ev’ry girl and boy
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
Ev’rybody’s gonna jump for joy
Come all without, come all within
You’ll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn”⁵

“I like to do just like the rest, I like my sugar sweet
But guarding fumes and making haste
It ain’t my cup of meat
Ev’rybody’s ’neath the trees
Feeding pigeons on a limb
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
All the pigeons gonna run to him
Come all without, come all within
You’ll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn”⁶

Bob Dylan wrote this song in 1967 during the Basement Tapes Sessions however it was one of two outtakes at that time. Shortly afterwards, in 1968, it was picked up and famously recorded by the English group Manfred Mann. They used it often in live concerts and recorded several later versions, including an extended play one that lasted over ten minutes. Dylan’s original recording of the “Mighty Quinn” was finally included in the Biograph CD released in 1985.

“A cat’s meow and a cow’s moo, I can recite ’em all
Just tell me where it hurts yuh, honey
And I’ll tell you who to call
Nobody can get no sleep
There’s someone on ev’ryone’s toes
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
Ev’rybody’s gonna wanna doze
Come all without, come all within
You’ll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn”⁷

Although it may seem like double talk, writing in the absurd mode often gets more directly to the truth. As it happens in Bob Dylan, it also occurs in William Butler Yeats, who provides one last word:

“Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.”⁸

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1 Dylan, Bob; “The Mighty Quinn” Words and Music; © 1968 by Dwarf Music; renewed in 1996 by Dwarf Music.

2 Dylan, Bob; “The Mighty Quinn” Words and Music; © 1968 by Dwarf Music; renewed in 1996 by Dwarf Music.

3 Bly, Robert; James Hillman and Michael Meade; The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: Poems for Men; Harper Perennial, Harper Collins Publishers; New Yrok, New York; 1992.

4 Rosenthal, M. L., ed.; Selected Poems and Two Plays of William Butler Yeats; The MacMillan Company; New York, New York; 1962; pp. 184-185.

5 Dylan, Bob; “The Mighty Quinn” Words and Music; © 1968 by Dwarf Music; renewed in 1996 by Dwarf Music.

6 Dylan, Bob; “The Mighty Quinn” Words and Music; © 1968 by Dwarf Music; renewed in 1996 by Dwarf Music.

7 Dylan, Bob; “The Mighty Quinn” Words and Music; © 1968 by Dwarf Music; renewed in 1996 by Dwarf Music.

8 Rosenthal, M. L., ed.; Selected Poems and Two Plays of William Butler Yeats; The MacMillan Company; New York, New York; 1962; p. 185.