04/11/2026
"I foamed — I raved — I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder — louder — louder!”
It was this initial exposure to the classic Edgar Allan Poe short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” during a middle school English class, when DB Henderson first realized the rhythmic and dramatic potential of poetry.
While not technically a poem, the tale of guilt and paranoia, culminating in a hysterical confession of murder by its narrator, is a textbook example of the legendary American writer’s use of pacing, accent and growing suspense to tell a simple story with artistic flair.
“Just the way he used words to build the intensity of the situation,” Henderson recalled. “Like how the floorboard is creaking, at least to his perspective, because that’s what he was seeing. I thought, ‘That is interesting.’”
From this lesson, he would go on to discover the poetry of Poe, along with the different writers and styles of the art form beyond the typical iambic pentameter and soon begin composing his own stories and music and participating in his school’s performing arts programs.
Now a junior at Coronado High School, Henderson will represent Colorado at the national “Poetry Out Loud” competition in Washington, D.C., after being named the state champion last month.
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