Maybe not so much like Hank Hill up Close

In July I wrote a post about George Bowering, renowned BC Poet and former Canadian Poet Laureate famed for slamming slam poetry. In my post I expressed my surprise upon seeing him read at the West Coast Poetry Festival, where I discovered that he looks like Hank Hill on the tv show King of the Hill. That's Hank on the left in this picture, if you don't know the show. I compared the reality to some of the publicity photos I had seen of the poet George Bowering like this one, and pondered just what it is a poet is supposed to look like.

I saw him again at Poet's Corner at The Word on the Street, where I volunteered on Sunday. I don't think he looks like Hank Hill anymore. You can decide by looking at the photo that I took. Now I think he looks like George Bowering. Having seen him twice, I have decided that it's the other photos that are wrong, and this is what he looks like. Similarity to a primetime cartoon character has faded. I met quite a few poets in the audience who have taken a poetry course that he taught. His poetry is very good, and from all accounts he is also a good teacher, and from what I saw on Sunday, a solid performer too.

One other thing I learned. He didn't wear his nametag. Most of the feature poets did not wear their nametags. That's okay, I'm sure they let them into the VIP lounge without them, unless of course the door person there was relying on old publicity photos or reruns of King of the Hill. Then George would not have got in, I don't think.

question: why does the way a person looks change with repeated exposure?

mompoet - minutiae-ponderer and nametag-kleptomaniac