Data Mind

Joanna Fuhrman is the author of six previous poetry collections, most recently To a New Era. Her poems have been featured in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, The Slowdown podcast, and the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. She is an assistant teaching professor in creative writing at Rutgers University and a coeditor of Hanging Loose Press.

“Many questions in this poetry would have felt like science fiction a generation ago, aiming directly at our evolution alongside technology in a way that will itch your ear long after reading.” —CAConrad, author of Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return"Joanna Fuhrman's Data Mind braves through the minefield of social media, our individualism heightened, flattened, and eventually erased as we post selfies and search for community. Instead we find clickbait, bots, the dark web, and ChatGPT in these surreal prose poems that take on the shape of our phones and computer screens, the boxes we put ourselves in and then try to punch out of.  Furman's monitors are an eerie update to Baudelaire's "Windows"—Perhaps you will say "Are you sure that your story is the real one?" Data Mind is gorgeous and complex, an important book for the digital age."—Denise Duhamel, author of Blowout“Fuhrman weaves together lyrical moments and moving prose that echo with emotional resonance as they speak to the confusion, cruelty, and strange beauty of life on the Internet. Memorable, surprising, and beautiful, Data Mind brings new and genuine light to questions of womanhood, the internet, and the liminal spaces between them.” —Lucy Biederman, author of The Walmart Book of the Dead "Fuhrman’s poems attach a pop, everyday smile to the larger issues that keep her reflections honest and far from sentimentality or pompousness -- a delicate balance of humor, subtlety, and punch. Her sparky, surreal images bubble over with bright enthusiasm that often carries a sly sarcasm in her back pocket. There's aways a slice of self-critique nearby to get her out of a tight corner and reset the coordinates; arrows stick out of every angle/orifice, so her scalpel-like incisions into the body politic come with a playful, Carroll-esque glimpse into the other side of the mirror where, if you look closely, you can see there's a party going on." —Charles Borkhuis, author of Rearview Mirror

• The Algorithm Ate My LunchAre You the Invisible Song That Was Playing?The Internet Is Not the CityPoetica FondantIf a Menopausal Woman Dances in a Jungle and Nobody Films ItDid You Know That Your DoppelgÄnger is Licking Chaos on the Dark Web?You Won’t Believe How Your Favorite Childhood Star Looks NowPrequelThe Least Witchy Witch on the InternetThe Year the Internet Was a Glitching MapThe Early AdopterThese Six Emojis Explain Your Life Right NowHow It Started/How It’s GoingIt’s Not a Language If Everyone Understands ItA Heart Is Not a MetaphorClick Here to Learn MoreData MindMy American Name is MoneyPhotographing Your Salad Turns It into a GhostWe’ll Burn that Algorithm When We Get to ItMe Day!Does this Data Make Me Look Fat?The Pink InternetBarbie Attempts to Gain Control of the Algorithmic StateMy Breast Squirts Milk at the Algorithmic StateThis Cat Video Will Change Your LifeClose Encounters Of the 21st KindThe MatrixThe WarriorsSomething WildDataverseChapstick TracesSliding DoorsIn the Matrix Starring Nicolas CageMy Man Godfrey for the Internet AgeDinner at 8Singing in the Rain#xyzbcaYour Ick Is My YumHow Many Internets Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?Out the Window, a Cat’s Cry Is a Portal to the Internet of NeedIn My Past Life I Was Only 57 1/2 Percent DataThe Future Leaks into the PastNot a Limit But a FrameMy American Name is MoneyThe Way the Data CrumblesThe Haunted HouseplantNo One Could Forget the Uproarious LaughterCoordinatesTikkun OlanMy Country Has Turned into a Haunted HouseMy Sorrow Is a Billboard Painted with CloudsPrequelOutrage FatigueTaxonomyThe Future Leaks into the PastEverything Outside is Something’s InsideData Mind