Stylistically, Papatsonis’s mature poetry is characterized by its failure to use a strict verse form, its discontinuous and dreamlike combination of images, and its highly personal quality. It is a poetry which intends to elicit meaning rather than to lend itself to pyrotechnical effects; it utilizes patterns of rhythms and sounds to make meaning more emphatic. His language is that of the mystical poet whose obscurity is conditioned by his transformation of myth and symbol into philosophy through surreal images which express the flow of the subconscious. Neither canonical nor schematic, his poetry is deeply spiritual, infused with visionary language and images. He resolves the apparent dichotomy between the surreal and the religious or theological aspects of his poetry in a highly mystical outpouring of feeling.

Papatsonis’s most mature poems treat themes of darkness and light, nature and divinity, the feminine presence as man’s intercessor, and the Greek myths. This is a poetry which intermingles the erotic, esoteric, and ecstatic, and flows freely from the subconscious, embodying the abstract in sensuous images of a progressively more dense and mystical character. In spite of the obvious Christian symbolism with which Papatsonis endows his poetry, he preferred to view his poetic output as basically “pantheist” rather than “religious,” a term frequently applied to him by Greek critics. He saw man’s soul as a shell in which resides the presence of god, a presence to be found even in the smallest objects in nature which both contain and reveal Him. The universe for Papatsonis was a revealer of that majesty and love which constantly draws man toward the heavens.