here's a quote from Carolyn Hall that i like:

"I believe the purpose of haiku is to touch us at the
core. We write haiku to record our experience. We
put our haiku out into the world in hopes of sharing
our emotional response with others. And sometimes
that requires fictionalizing the haiku just enough to
stay true to the moment but also to communicate
to our audience the full impact that experience had
on us."

i picked it up out of f/k/a which was quoting from Frogpond XXVIII: 3, at 57.