Naaman

Naaman Corn was a chauffeur for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company's executive offices during Wallace Stevens' tenure with the company. Corn quite often ran personal errands for Stevens and provided transportation for the Stevens family during their outings. [1] Corn's name, along with the names of several of Stevens' Hartford associates, appears in the poem entitled "Certain Phenomena of Sound," published in the 1947 collection Transport to Summer. After learning that his name appears in the collection, Corn best describes Stevens' poem in this way: "And sure enough, he had some poem . . . in there with my name on it and [that of] one of the officers that used to live out on Asylum Avenue. This poem was about him in one spot, and then one little spot in there he brought me in on the poem." The poet, Corn claims, "just used his imagination," and while Corn did run personal errands for Stevens, the chauffeur never served Stevens mango dressed "[w]ith white wine, sugar and lime juice" (ii, 2-3). [2]          
   
==Notes==
1. Brazeau 248, 53.
2. Stevens in Kermode and Richardson 256.
==References==
Brazeau, Peter. Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered. 1977. New York: Random House, 1983. Print.
Stevens, Wallace. "Certain Phenomena of Sound." Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Frank Kermode, and Joan Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1997. 255-57. Print.