eschews metaphor

Haiku eschews metaphor, simile, and personification. Nothing is like something else in most well-realized haiku. As Basho said: "Learn of the pine from a pine." Learn, that is, what a pine tree is, not what it is like—one supposes this is what Basho meant.

—Kenneth Yasuda, The Japanese Haiku (Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1957)