The life of a fictional person from this location is described in a preface by Pierre Louÿs (“loo-EESE”) that discusses how crime was inspired by its tyrant Pittacus enacting an anti-flute law. Two monodic poets from this location who are part of the nine Melic poets each lend their name to a four-line stanza form. Both Alcaeus and a contemporary who described feeling “greener than grass” in a poem opening “He seems to me equal to the gods” hailed from the city of Mytilene on this island. A poetess from this island pleads with a “deathless” “child of Zeus” to “be my ally” in a translation of her “Hymn to Aphrodite” collected in Anne Carson’s If Not, Winter. For 10 points, Sappho is from what island, whose name is the origin of the term for female same-sex love? ■END■
ANSWER: Lesbos [accept Mytilene until read; prompt on lesbian; prompt on ancient Greece] (The first line is from The Songs of Bilitis. The second line refers to Alcaic and Sapphic stanzas. The quotes in the third line are from Sappho 31, sometimes called “Ode to Anactoria.”)
<Editors, World Literature>
= Average correct buzz position