Erica Doyle

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Here’s a captured moment of R. Erica Doyle, the powerhouse poet whose work explores desire, identity, and the body with unflinching eloquence.

Below are some of her most vivid and thought-provoking lines and quotes—from her poems and her reflections in interviews—that highlight her bold style and thematic urgency.

Memorable Lines from R. Erica Doyle’s Poems

The Well-Groomed Otter Is Extremely Buoyant

• “In this kind of sea, floating really matters. / The well-groomed otter is a tail above the others.”
• “to be groomed is the key to survive in this sea.”
  These lines capture how presentation and self-maintenance can serve as ways to stay afloat in overwhelming environments.  

Gaydar

• “I am in the silent mouth that strangles the arteries / I am in the ear of damn you to hell and against the law / I am in the throat of disgusting and why why why… I am the voice of a woman in the tongue of a woman / A nova, a dare, a truth…”
  This raw and rhythmic declaration confronts identity, oppression, and communal strength with potent imagery.  

Winter

• “i stand quoting shadows / of all the things i could have done… the curve of our foot just so”
• “this season i stand with palms splayed / forcing encroaching walls apart”
  These lines evoke regret, memory, and the fierce human impulse to resist confinement—both physical and emotional.  

Striking Excerpts from Essays & Interviews

Everyone You Love Will Die

• “Only to say their names. Oh my God, why? Why. They were so young…”
• “If we grasp too hard, they cut our palms.”
  Doyle meditates on grief, mortality, and ancestral presence—inviting quieter, perhaps spiritual reckonings with the unavoidable.  

On Poetry & Desire (via Poetry Foundation)

• “Hardly anyone was writing about sex the way I knew we were doing it, and feeling it, and sometimes fucking each other up and over… Sex and the body are what make us dangerous…”
  Here Doyle explains how her work centers the body’s potency—its political and erotic friction—as a force in writing.  

“Taking it Lying Down: An Interview…”

• “You have come to do an autopsy and at the first excision found a beating heart.”
  Doyle describes Proxy as a surgical excavation of desire—raw, precise, and alive.  

On Writing & Hunger (Lambda Literary interview)

• “When I write, I am hungry for something. And I don’t always know what it is. But the poem is there to assuage it.”
  A beautiful image of writing as solace and search.  

Why These Lines Matter

• Embodiment & Survival: From the buoyant otter to the flesh and bone of identity, Doyle explores how the body carries us—vulnerable yet fierce.
• Desire as Power & Risk: Whether tender or violent, desire pulses through her work as both wound and wellspring.
• Memory & Loss: Her reflections on death—particularly of elders and young lives cut short—are quiet, searing, and deeply human.
• Writing as Need: Doyle writes from a place of hunger—addressing what must be spoken, felt, or witnessed in visceral honesty.

Would you like to explore more from Proxy, hear audio performances, or dive deeper into any specific poem or theme?