He has been an intelligent and unflagging spokesperson for haiku for over thirty years as well as an extremely able practitioner. There is much to be learned from all these essays. Traditionally, the Japanese have ensured this by insisting that to be a haiku the poem must have a season word, while a senryu does not. They have always had the same form. The tension between the natural object and language is one of the great problems of Western poetry, and it is interesting to see it showing up in the context of a form with roots in the East.
People differ in their capacities for visualization, synesthesia, etc.
Haiku may indeed long towards the condition of natural objects, but it is finally text with which we must deal. Of course the second line, which is usually seven, isfive syllables, but the concluding line is only four. There are things I wish were included in The Haiku Anthology. Native American writer Gerald Vizenor has written some beautiful poems in this vein. Beat poet Michael McClure, following the lead of Jack Kerouac, has written very interesting examples for many years.