After two months in various Haiku communities I have made some observations.

It seems that there are different ”schools” within and between the groups. So, when I saw comments as ”personal”, they rather referred to different approaches to haiku.

I have not experienced more than a couple of differing approaches. At the moment I’ll comment on the idea that haiku should be purely ”observational”. This link is a very nice example of that approach: 

https://www.thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/files/original/0df09bda685fae183d4413808f89a94d.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3Qq2-Dd2qXcx3ELlcAWZH4YC5B4OuvzTTF1dfailrILJ03GnFfuOpsKl4

I’ll take one image as a point of departure

How does the observational requirement affect my writing?

What I saw was a straw of grass that raised itself up from the collection of peonies. The straw was so beautiful and still not easily observable.

My first reaction was the following:

In the peonies
the head of a grass straw 
a flute among drums

And then I reacted:

Not so! This is a simile

I looked in the book and started with the time of my observation:

a day in July
a straw among peonies
that lost their petals

This is only one observation, let me add another to make it into two observations. I looked at the clouds and felt some soft rain.

a day in July
a straw among peonies
Soft rain

Acceptable but not particularly interesting

Then I wanted to add a text to the photo to make it a shahai:

A day in July
Grass grows
Birds are silent

Acceptable but not particularly interesting. Or – I know! Birds usually stop singing when they expect bad weather.Maybe a reader can see this?

A high grass straw  –
A bumble-bee dives down
into a flower

Which one is OK? You can see the grass but not the bumble bee (that I have got in another picture). I don’t know!

Comments welcome!