How to write haiku: Michael Dylan Welch explains it all in "Becoming a Haiku Poet" -- an eloquent, concise, humane introduction to the writing of what he calls "the most compressed poem in the world."

The most important characteristic of haiku is how it conveys, through implication and suggestion, a moment of keen perception and perhaps insight into nature or human nature. Haiku does not state this insight, however, but implies it.