While he was not very prolific, his melancholic poetry has been praised for its lyrical quality and form and was influential for subsequent Armenian poets.

[3] He was buried at the old Mler cemetery in the city, which was soon after developed into the Komitas Pantheon, the resting place of many of Armenia's most prominent cultural icons.

[6] Asmarian credits Hovhannisyan with the creation of a new school of Eastern Armenian poetry, followers of which included Hovhannes Tumanyan and Avetik Isahakyan, among others.

[3] Kevork Bardakjian writes that the "wistful, impersonal yearning" of Hovhannisyan's poetry "captured the mood of the age."

Bardakjian praises Hovhannisyan for his "gentle, lyrical verse," his diction, and his attention to form, the last of which earlier authors had neglected and which later poets further developed.

[6] The subjects of Hovhannisyan's poetry include love and nature, as well as tragedy and the hard life of Armenia's peasantry.

[3] Hovhannisyan also translated works from classic and contemporary writers, such as Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, Victor Hugo, Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolay Nekrasov, Heinrich Heine, Sándor Petőfi, Ludwig Uhland and others.

In Asmarian's view, his translations of Władysław Syrokomla's "Niepiśmienny" (Illiterate) and Uhland's "Des Sängers Fluch" (The singer's curse) stand on their own as literary works.