Editor’s recommendation and credits:
Tino Villanueva has graciously permitted us to publish his poem Scene from the Movie GIANT (1993). We are certainly humbled. A few recommendations to the reader are in order. First, Dr. Villanueva suggests that the reader watch the movie (or watch it anew) and pay particular focus to the fight scene. We have included a clip from the movie elsewhere here. Dr. Norma Elia Cantu and Drs. Arturo Madrid (Prof. Emeritus, Trinity Univ., San Antonio) and Dr. Antonia Castaneda, among many others, recently organized the Fourth Annual Arturo Madrid Symposium in Latin@ Art (April 6, 2021). We thank them and Trinity University for granting us access to the Symposium’s program, parts of which we have included in this edition of IberoAztlan. Be on the lookout, Dr. Cantu advises that some recorded sessions from the Symposium may soon be made available. Perhaps we can include some of those in the June edition of IberoAztlan.
Finally, you must read Jaime Armin Mejia’s piece, entitled “Memories and Poems and Songs of the Radicalized Past In Texas. Dr. Mejia shares his personal friendship with Dr. Villanueva. That background may be helpful to interpret Villanueva’s deep poetic vault, including “Scene from the Movie, GIANT”. Finally, if it is another layman’s review of the poem that might interest you, read my review of Scene from the Movie GIANT.
The poem follows in full in multiple parts and can be enjoyed over a period to time. First, do watch the movie clip; then you might want to read Dr. Jaime Armin Mejia’s piece. After that get after the poem. It is a hard read. Hopefully, the added materials will be of some value to an understanding of the poem.
Scene From the Movie GIANT (1993)
by Tino Villanueva
What I have from 1956 is one instant at the Holiday
Theater, where a small dimension of a film, as in
A dream, became the feature of the whole. It
Comes toward the end…café scene, which
Reels off a slow spread of light, a stark desire
To see itself once more, though there is, at times,
No joy in old time movies. It begins with the
Jingling of bells and the plainer truth of it:
That the front door to a roadside café opens and
Shuts as the Benedicts (Rock Hudson and Elizabeth
Taylor), their daughter Luz, and daughter-in-law
Juana and grandson Jordy, pass through it not
Unobserved. Nothing sweeps up into an actual act
Of kindness into the eyes of Sarge, who owns this
Joint and has out for dark-eyed Juana, weary
Of too much longing that comes with rejection.
Juana, from barely inside the door, and Sarge,
Stout and unpleased from behind his counter, clash
Eye-to-eye, as time stands like heat, Silence is
Everywhere, acquiring the name of hatred and Juana
Cannot bear the dread—the dark-jowl gaze of Sarge
Against her skin. Suddenly, bells go off again.
By the quiet effort of walking, three Mexican-
Types step in, whom Sarge refuses to serve…
Those gestures of his, those looks that could kill
A heart you carry in memory for years. A scene from
The past has caught me in the act of living: even
To myself I cannot say except with worried phrases
Upon a paper, how I withstood arrogance in a gruff
Voice coming with the deep-dyed colors of the screen;
How in the beginning I experienced almost nothing to
Say and now wonder if I can ever live enough to tell
The after-tale. I remember this and I remember myself
Locked into a back-row seat—I am a thin, flickering,
Helpless light, local-looking, unthought of at fourteen.
I.
The 8 O’Clock Movie
Boston 1973—Years had passed and I assumed a
Different life when one night, while resting from
Books on Marlborough Street (where things like
This can happen), there came into my room images
In black-and-white with a flow of light that
Would not die. It all came back to me in different
Terms: characters were born again, met up with
Each other in adult life, drifted across the
Screen to discover cattle and oil, traveled miles
On horseback in dust and heat, characters whose
Names emerged as if they mattered in a history
Book. Some were swept up by power and prejudice
Toward neighbors different from themselves,
Because that is what the picture is about, with
Class distinctions moving the plot along. A few
Could distinguish right from wrong; those who
Could not you condemned from the beginning when
You noticed them at all. Still others married or
Backed off from the ranch with poignant flare,
Like James Dean, who in the middle of grazing land
Unearthed the treasures of oil, buried his soul in
Money and went incoherent with alcohol. When the 40s
Came, two young men were drafted, the one called Angel
Dying at war. It’s a generational tale, so everybody
Aged once more and said what they had to say along the
Way according to the script. And then the end: the
Hamburger joint brought into existence to the beat of
“The Yellow Rose of Texas,” Juana and her child the
Color of dark amber, foreshadowing the Mexican -looking
Couple and their daughter, all in muteness, wanting
To be served, I climbed out of bed and in my head
Was a roaring of light—words spoken and unspoken
Had brought the obliterated back. Not again (I said,
From my second-floor room)…let this not be happening
Three and-a-half hours had flicked by. As the sound
Trailed off into nothing, memory would not dissolve.
The Benedicts (up-close)
Together with their daughter Luz, they
Are casually rich, self-assured, handsome—: have
Written their hoof-beats upon the land and
Named it; whose son is absent from this
Scene and is not a keeper of cows, but Harvard-trained
Instead, and thus a rebel who practices
The goodness of medicine alongside the
Ethnic good looks of his able nurse, Juana, who is
Here with her child trying to cross
The burning threshold of this pull-in café
And gets caught in the vast unwelcome which are the eyes
Of Sarge that fire upon the heart.
The Serving of Water
Tell the portly waitress to stay overtime and
She will do it. Dressed in white, she is a
Version of Sarge…Who follows orders well
…Who may have it in her mind she is “The
Sweetest little rosebud that Texas ever knew.”
Her whole embodiment is whatever she is doing—:
At a booth, here on the warm sketchy plain
Of day, it is water she sets out for the
Benedicts: the measurement of water is a ritual
That isolates a face from the many colors of the
Day, and she does so with her eyes aimed at
Anyone she has given a harsh name to—like Juana,
And her child, half-Anglo, who in Juana’s womb
Became all Mexican just the same. The waitress
Entirely conscious of her act, whose eyes, quick,
Flee back to Sarge and now call out in silence,
Brings this moment to the edge of something tense
That spreads to everything. Her sudden look of
Outward regard—then Sarge, stirring dense cloud
Gathering (entering left), standing over everyone
In tallness almighty. Ice-cream is what Rock Hudson
Wishes for grandson. “Ice-cream it shall be,”
His words a revelation of delight: “Give the
Little fella some ice-cream”…Summer is one long
Afternoon when Sarge, moved by deep familiar
Wrath, talks down: “Ice-cream—thought that kid’d
Want a tamale.” An angry mass of time travels
Back and Forth the distance between Sarge and
Rock Hudson, as I sit, shy of speech, in a stammer
Of light, and breathe a breath not fully breathed…
Claiming the Air
Sarge, the proprietor, has already claimed the air with
His eyes, squared off against Rock Hudson by slurring
His grandchild. The camera’s eye blinks, adjust its
Focus to the segment that follows, the one grown around
Me like a lingering first cause. I remember it frame
By frame almost: The little bell on top of the door is
Heard as the door opens: an old Mexican American couple,
And a woman, who could be an eldest daughter, come in.
Their image stays frozen, burns evenly around my brain: a
Tableau of himself, he is stooped in the ruts of old age,
Bits of gray hair fluffing out from under his hat, that
Courteous hat. The women, in uneventful-street clothes,
How their faces do not glow back from themselves, yet
Beckon with the color of sepia subdued—his also. Slow
In their gait toward the nearest booth by the door, they
Show a tired look as if from a journey begun long ago, one
Only their heritage could know. A woman I could be nephew
To and a couple old enough to call me grandson have walked
Into my life. They go unnoticed, except by Sarge, who walks
Among the greasy fires of his kitchen, comes to a stop and
Lets fly, heavy as lead: “Hey, you!” This is Sarge’s Place.
A hamburger joint risen like a voice against the good.
Text for a Vaquero: Flashback
Giant (1956), next-to-the-last scene: Old man Polo,
head vaquero on Rock Hudson’s Reata Ranch, has come
from sunlight, wife and daughter with him, to break
bread, where hamburgers might be enough for a family
who shall not be served. In my other mind I see him
in his youthful air—:
Dawns were easy in the branding camps
when he scrambled up
to the restless movement of the herd.
And when morning had lifted into noon
he didn’t choke on dust
because his lungs were stronger
than wind shifts.
He owned the language of the roundup
and each day experienced triumphed on the range.
I see him riding with others:
sombreros obeying the knowledge of the head:
chaparreras rough-riding
with their legs.
He is straight-backed, bandana at the neck,
and leather-brown face toughened by the sun
glancing off his sweat.
Now he’s moving warily
around stampedes he still remembers
in his bones.
So that if, for an instant, he grows quieter,
it’s because he remains a separate fact—
a silhouetted stoic in his saddle
like some vigilant bronzed god
pondering his fate.
Evening draws upon the plain
and the cattle have been managed
into place. And it becomes almost like desire
when he reins his mount
before the mingled odors
of leather and foodstuff
and beckons, in bated breath, a radiant sky
to show itself. Where the wind is cut off,
he lies with the flesh-tones of earth,
thinks about the history of the moon
and whether rain will come
to soothe the dust raving up from hooves
in the middle of July.
Bedded down, he’s an object
half-buried among the blankets and the chaparral,
counting stars to fall asleep.
And when he dreams
he dreams that in a hundred years
his sons can own the ground he roams
and that his can be near…
That was many years ago. Now the trail has led
to here: the false hell of the hamburger place that
consumes him…time denies him what he’s been:
where there’s no earth nor sky to make him free.
