Thanks, Matthew. I really appreciate hearing your perspective on this, as someone who’s been serious about haiku for quite a bit longer than me, I believe. I’m always tempted to paraphrase Laozi: Composing haiku is like frying a small fish. That light touch, that easily ruined but potentially exquisite morsel. It’s really easy to overdo it and I see myself doing that all the time, especially in first drafts. The Zen dictum “First thought, best thought” only works for people who aren’t over-thinkers!

For my money, the concept of ‘incompleteness’ is an under-rated one; more interesting than, say, ‘show, don’t tell’, ‘beginner’s mind’ or notions about disjunction between the two elements of the poem. It also helps in guarding against complacency: Francis Bacon said in one his David Sylvester interviews that if he ever felt one of his paintings was too perfect, he would deliberately mar it in some way because achieving perfection would mean he’d’ve had to give up.