In writing the poem, Pound was inspired by the Japanese haiku, an extremely compressed poetic form consisting of seventeen syllables distributed across three lines in a 5–7–5 pattern. Although Pound doesn’t follow the haiku form precisely in terms of the number and patterning of syllables, he does incorporate two other traditional aspects of haiku. The first aspect is a reference to the season (kijo), which Pound provides in the description of “petals on a wet, black bough,” which suggests spring. The second aspect is a so-called “cutting word” (kireji), which is a sort of key word that grounds the poem in some important way. Critics have often pointed to the word “apparition” as the poem’s centerpiece, partly because of its length and partly because of its multiple meanings and connotations. Finally, it’s worth noting that the poem lacks a verb, which is also common in haiku. Instead of forming a complete sentence, the poem offers what Pound called a “super-position” of two images, one set on top of the other. Thus, while not resembling a haiku in the strictest of terms, Pound arguably structured the poem in a way that references the spirit of haiku.