Nossis 11 (AP 7.718)
Stranger, if you're sailing towards Mitylene of the beautiful dances
to draw inspiration from the flower of the graces of Sappho,
say that I was dear to the Muses, and that the Locrian land bore me, and once you know that my name was Nossis, go.
Reading is a difficult art. We read best, that is, not only with most sensitivity but with greatest pleasure, those texts which we have been taught to read well. Learning to read a new author, or in a new genre, is a great effort, the more difficult if it must be self-taught. Few readers are equipped to make the attempt wholly unaided. A new poet who wishes to become well-known does well to attempt visibly to attach her work to that of a canonical predecessor, to indicate how she wants her work to be read, and that it can be read with the critical tools already in the reader's possession.