When Uncle Seamus speaks, connecting haiku poets to those Irish, we should all listen. To quote:

"Another quality which the Old Irish poet shares with his Japanese counterpart is a quality we might call "this worldness" - both are as alert as hunters to their physical surroundings - and yet there is also a strong sense of another world within this "this worldness", one to which poetic expression promises access. In each case, it's as if the poet is caught between the delights of the contingent and the invitations of the transcendent, yet by registering as precisely and poignantly as possible his consciousness of this middle state he manages to effect what Matthew Arnold would have called "a criticism of life".

In this talk, he also brings to my attention Paul Muldoon's wickedly sharp "Hopewell Haiku"; it is well worth a close reading. I will be posting Muldoon's "Quoof" (a damn subtle sonnet!) separately in a bit.