[microtherion]

As a (sparsely) published poet, I find most English Haiku not particularly inspiring. There may be an aesthetic quality in Japanese Haiku that does not happen when using other languages, or there just may be a large body of bad Japanese Haiku that non-native speakers never learn about.

I believe that the reasons that attract mediocre poets to Haiku are:

* They follow a formula that is easy to understand and reproduce.

* They are short.

So it's reasonably easy to produce something that fits the form, and mediocre poets will leave it at that and not reflect on whether the result is any good.

In general, I think beginning poets prefer somewhat more formal poetry, but even a Sonnet takes a bit of effort, and something like a Villanelle or a Sestina gets quite hard already.