“By turns reverent and irreverent, God is a Laughing Bedouin puts a human face on the Biblical story and confronts the stages of a woman’s life with wit and fearlessness. Bryant’s collection reminds me of Colm Toibin’s celebrated The Testament of Mary in its candour and compassion. Playful yet immensely moving, these poems show us what it means to be mortal.”
–Evelyn Lau

“It’s rare to encounter poems that break free of conventions. Bryant recognizes this is where poetry’s power is as she turns the questions of aging, spiritual life, intimacy and death inside out. The result is exhilarating.”
–Betsy Warland

“Cullene Bryant’s God Is a Laughing Bedouin is at turns funny, heartbreaking, and sublime. We are in an age in which the territory of the spiritual is disputed, sometimes productively and sometimes destructively, but Bryant’s voice cuts through the noise with a reminder that the highest thoughts are rooted in direct experience. Her poems are wrought from the quotidian suffused with the elevated, and the sublime brought into deep, familiar focus. With these poems, Bryant will shepherd you through to the self you see in others–the self you’ll recognize in these flashes of the eternal.”
–Wayde Compton

“Whether through unflinching and compassionate poems about her work as a hospital chaplain assisting patients during the final days of their lives, or through vivid and often wryly humorous poems about marriage, childbirth, divorce, widowhood, and aging, Cullene Bryant co-mingles the personal and the Biblical to reveal the arc of a rich and varied life. From delight to despair to celebration, these poems explore the presence (or absence) of the Holy with open eyes and an open spirit.”
–Fiona Tinwei Lam