“[Haiku] is not a literary career; it’s an exercise in mind-focus that everyone shares.”
“But given the “roof of hell” haiku you just recited, it seems that you don’t worry about the five-seven-five syllable count?
That’s for Japanese language. The ratio of morphemes to phonemes is different in English and in Japanese. I am in touch with the American haiku people and their magazines, like Modern Haiku. The position I take, and there’s several others who join me on this, is not to worry about syllable count. That’s a Japanese challenge, not an English language challenge.”
From interview with John Felstiner, “The Post Natural World”