Not So Ill convinces primarily by the sensitivity and accuracy of its observations, but it also relies heavily on signals to the reader to think this or that, by way of its wide use of the declarative statement. Initially Papageorgiou calls attention to nodes of correspondence, interesting gaps in a given poem’s logic, but then she breaks the spell with such statements as, “There is a second round in everything,” “Time can be whatever anyone wants it to be,” “Fire is a chemical process,” “The world will break your heart,” and “Strippers are creating a fantasy,” resulting in less dynamic poems, ones that submit to the self-evident or the didactic.
Still, when Not So Ill relies specifically on what’s included in the poem in relation to what’s been left out, as when Papageorgiou writes here, in a koan-like manner, “Finding adventure in a single person/is like walking into woods/smelling of a thousand pencils,” it’s hard not to be compelled by the implicit narratologic lacuna.
What Not So Ill attempts to capture is the world of fleeting emotion and unpredictable feelings. Characters pass through numerous locales apparently seeking out something that they, and we, can’t quite comprehend, thus articulating the emptiness the twenty-first-century human might feel. Overall, though, Not So Ill is as life-affirming as it is skeptical. In spite of the many characters portrayed who seem unable to make meaning of their lives, the speaker is malleable and analytical, and pursues a spiritual journey toward self-knowledge; indeed, the depth of these poems is provided by this very sense of an uncertain spiritual quest, which is, in the last analysis, open to any one of us.