Originality- Does it Exist???

Very interesting topic.  I think back when I wasn't aware of certain "writing faults", and I was much more prolific and maybe a bit more creative too.  I didn't think about cliche's, forced rhyme, broken meter, or what's been done before, I just wrote to write. Sometimes thinking too much about what poetry should or shouldn't be can stifle the whole writing process. Still, it's important to learn the basics, and about what good writing is, even though it might feel a bit stifling.   I do think that true originality exists, and it happens when you read poetry from poets who have taken something common and made the reader see, feel, or view something in a way unexpected or new.  To illustrate this, I always go back to Ranier Maria Rilke and his poem:

"The Panther"

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

Rainer Maria Rilke