How to Moth celebrates the joys and the griefs of a life of loving wine, women, and song. Working in both established forms and musical free verse, Hailey Leithauser takes us from slovenly blondes to tipsy milkmaids to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, from pink peignoirs to beds made from burlap sacks, a salver of oysters to a nun's unset table, a fried surfer dame to the person from Porlock, and running throughout it all, the undeniable and unyielding urge to take a mad bite of the moon.

Hailey Leithauser is the author of Swoop, winner of the Poetry Foundation's Emily Dickinson First Book Award and the Towson Prize for Literature, and Saint Worm. Her work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies such as Poetry, AGNI, Yale Review, and four editions of Best American Poetry. She lives in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC.