act of creation, was a triumph over the experience. >> woodruff: jeffrey brown and u.s. poet laureate, natasha trethewey, continue their journey to find "where poetry lives." this time they travel to seattle, where troubled teens give voice to their hardships in verse. >> different places, group homes, institutions. i started writing because i didn't have another way to cope. those are just some of the stories we're covering on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> i've been around long enough to recognize the people who are out there owning it. the ones getting involved, staying engaged. they are not afraid to question the path they're on. because the one question they never want to ask is, "how did i end up here?" i started schwab with those people. people who want to take ownership of their investments, like they do in every other aspect of their lives. >> supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: russia's annexation of crimea now appears imminent. late today, the kremlin recognized the region's vote for independence from ukraine, in the face of u.s. and europe penalties. hari sreenivasan has our report on the day's diplomatic developments. >> sreenivasan: a day after crimea voted to secede from ukraine and join russia, president obama went before white house cameras with the toughest sanctions against russia since the end of the cold war. >> today i'm announcing a series of measures that will continue to increase the cost on russia and on those responsible for what is happening in ukraine. >> sreenivasan: the cost means freezing assets and imposing travel bans on seven russian officials, including some close to president vladimir putin. and on four ukranians, including former president viktor yanukovych. mr. obama said he stands ready to ratchet the costs higher, but still holds out hope for another solution. >> i believe there's still a path to resolve this situation diplomatically in a way that addresses the interests of both russia and ukraine. that includes russia pulling its forces in crimea back to their bases, supporting the deployment of additional international monitors in ukraine and engaging in dialogue with the ukrainian government. >> sreenivasan: in brussels, european union leaders adopted their own sanctions on 21 russian and ukrainian officials. e.u. foreign policy chief catherine ashton condemned the crimean referendum. >> i don't have to remind any of you that it's illegal under the constitution of ukraine and under international law. i call upon russia yet again to meet with ukrainian leaders and to start dialogue with them and to try and move to de-escalation please as quickly as possible. we've seen no evidence of that. >> sreenivasan: russia appeared unfazed. putin signed an order recognizing crimea as a sovereign state. and deputy prime minister dmitry rogozin tweeted: i think the decree of the president of the united states was written by some joker. >> sreenivasan: the russian foreign ministry called for ukraine to hand over more power to its provinces, and declare itself neutral. in kiev, the ukrainian defense minister insisted his country won't back down. >> ( translated ): one thing i want to say: crimea was, is and will be our ukrainian territory. and our military will stay there and we will fix this question. i think the whole world supports us and we will fix this question in a peaceful and diplomatic way. but in any case our defense forces are ready to execute an order. >> sreenivasan: to that end, ukraine's parliament authorized mobilization of 40,000 reservists, to counter what it calls blatant aggression by russia. meanwhile, president putin will address the russian parliament tomorrow, on annexing crimea. and vice president joe biden heads to europe tonight for talks with n.a.t.o. allies. >> woodruff: we'll get a look from inside crimea, with chief foreign affairs correspondent margaret warner, right after the news summary. the court martial of an army general has ended in a deal that dropped sexual assault charges. a military judge, at fort bragg, north carolina, accepted a guilty plea today, from brigadier general jeffrey sinclair, on lesser charges. he admitted to improper relationships with three subordinates, including a female captain, who made the most serious accusations against him. the border between lebanon and syria is alive with new tensions. the lebanon army sent commandos to stabilize the area today, as syrian rebels poured across. they're escaping syrian government forces who captured the syrian town of yabroud on sunday. it was the rebels' last stronghold in the border region. president obama today worked to keep israeli-palestinian peace negotiations afloat. at a white house meeting, he pressed palestinian president mahmoud abbas to make tough decisions. abbas, in turn, made no public concessions, but he agreed on the need for a settlement. >> ( translated ): we don't have any time to waste. time is not on our side, especially given the very difficult situation that the middle east is experiencing and the entire region is facing, and we hope that we would be able to seize this opportunity to achieve a lasting peace. >> woodruff: the president met two weeks ago with the israeli prime minister. secretary of state john kerry is trying to get a framework for peace talks by late april. >> woodruff: wall street vaulted ahead, due partly to relief that things remained calm in crimea today, and partly to strong factory output last month. the dow jones industrial average gained 181 points to close at 16,247. the nasdaq rose 34 points to close near 4,280. the standard and poor's 500 was up 17, to finish over 1,858. more international investigators have arrived in malaysia, to help search for a missing jetliner. the search area now stretches from central asia to the southernmost indian ocean. but confusion continues, with malaysian officials now backtracking on when exactly the jet's communications were disabled. we'll get a full report later in the program. general motors has announced a major new recall, over potentially defective air bags and other issues. it involves 1.5 million buick, chevrolet and g.m.c. s.u.v.'s and vans, plus cadillac x.t.s sedans. model years range from 2008 to 2014. g.m. is already facing investigations over a recall of 1.6 million vehicles with ignition switch problems. a partial vehicle ban took effect across paris today, to ease the worst air pollution in years. under a thick haze, cars with even-numbered license plates were barred from driving in the french capital. taxis and commercial vehicles were exempt, and some public transportation was free. many people said they support the move. >> i was driving around on a scooter last thursday and friday, and it was really polluted. it's a good idea, but if we had more advanced notice, we could have organized ourselves. now to learn of it the day before it starts is a bit hard, but we have to adapt like everyone else. >> woodruff: if the pollution persists, odd-numbered vehicles will be banned from driving in paris tomorrow. the los angeles area escaped without serious damage this morning after one of it's strongest earthquakes in decades. the quake was centered about 15 miles northwest of the city's downtown civic center, with a magnitude of 4.4. it shook buildings for 150 miles across southern california. the tremor ranks as one of the region's largest since the deadly northridge quake in 1994. the world's largest st. patrick's day parades went on today in new york, without the city's new leader. kilted irish americans and bagpipers were in abundance, but mayor bill de blasio boycotted after organizers barred signs deemed pro-gay. on sunday, boston mayor martin walsh stayed away from his city's parade, for the same reason. the scientific world is abuzz this evening with a discovery from the heavens. for the first time, there's evidence the universe exploded in growth, in the first instant after the big bang. researchers at harvard used this telescope at the south pole to scan the sky for three years. the discovery supports a longstanding theory of an initial growth spurt, nearly 14 billion years ago. still to come on the newshour: margaret warner with the latest from crimea; plus, developments in the search for that missing passenger jet; then, stories of hardship translated into verse; and, a portrait of the civil rights activist and firebrand, stokely carmichael. >> woodruff: now, we take a close look inside crimea, as it moves toward moscow, and what it means to those who call the black sea peninsula home. our cheif foreign affairs correspondent margaret warner is in simferopol and tonight reports on a population facing an uncertain future. >> reporter: crimea's parliament convened this morning to endure sunday's referendum and formally implied to join russia. like yesterday's improbably margin, today's move to break away from ukraine was never in doubt. the delegation was dispatched to moscow to work out the the details. the swift action reflected the jubilation among crimea's ethnic russian majority, thousands of whom partied into the night sunday. they packed the capital simferopol's lenin square under a frigid north wind. on the streets this morning, we heard much the se. >> justice has been restored. we have been returned to our country and we're very happy. >> reporter: we didn't hear any sober reflection on the weighty questions of what comes next. top of that list, what becomes of the ukrainian territory here? it's still under the command of the government in kiev which denounced the referendum as ill legitimate. saturday we met ukrainian air force colonel, for three weeks he and his men held an uneasy standoff with pro russian portions surrounding them and most other military bases. his order, with were to secure weapons and equipment but avoid confrontation or bloodshed. he dismissed warnings from crimean authorities that, after the vote, ukrainian forces will have to leave the peninsula or join the new russian-affiliated crimean military. >> we receive these kind of ultimatums all the time but stand firm. our superiors should solve this situation. >> reporter: last night, iraq's acting defense minister said he and the runnings agreed on a crews in crimea till this friday. he conceded he had no idea what to do if pro-russia forces try to force his unit to disbarred. have you received direct orders of what to do in different situations after sunday? >> we don't have any forward-looking recommendations. we just keep calm, carrying on our duties and have no more concrete instructions. >> reporter: can you imagine joining the creamian army? >> we're true to our oath but will fulfill our constitutional duty to the end. there will be no transition to the crimean army. >> reporter: we heard something quite different yesterday from another crimean soviet army veteran. major vladimir and members of his paratroop group were standing outside poland place to prevent "provocation." i asked if crimea moves to join russia, who will secure the peninsula? >> we're not worried about that. we'll find common language with russian paratroopers who come here. i don't think any security issues will arise if and when crimea separates from ukraine because we have a lot of colleagues on the russian side. >> reporter: what will happen to the ukrainian army here? >> my professional opinion is 80 to 90% of the army in crimey are native crimeans so they will stay with the republic of crimea. if crimea joins russia they will almost tile lyle fall under russian command. >> reporter: the prospect of full russian control stirs unease among russian tartars, those who have suffered discrimination in soviet and russian times though remained here. most boycott a ref yenned yum an.we were told some young tarts will resist the outcome. >> i am a ukrainian. i will fight for. this this is our homeland. we have nowhere else to go. if needed, we'll take up guns. you can't expect anything from russia. if someone is coming to our land with guns, we have no choice, it is our last resort. >> reporter: he believes the tartars who resist will join the ukrainian military, not launch a chechen-style islamic insurgency against russia and conceded many tartars will hunker down for now while others take yet another course. >> the tension is in the air. there's a rift among russian community and the tartar community, and many people have decided to leave. >> reporter: other crimeans have already left. pro-ukrainian activists who found themselves under direct threat in the weeks leading up to the vote. >> we knew that the referendum would be like that when we started our fight. >> reporter: this woman remained but at an art center last night, she and friends said they felt a deep sense of alienation after landslide vote to join russia. >> i was born in ukraine, but you can't change your citizenship just like that. today i'm ukrainian, next russian, and next day i may be german because i'm told if i join germany, i will have lots of money and possibilities. >> reporter: she vows to stay as long as people like her want to maintain the peninsula's ties with the ukraine. >> i will stay here and help them. if not, i believe that i would leave myself as well because infrathinking for a long time that mainly, maybe i will do better if i go to ukraine. >> but most people we spoke to yesterday believe better days are ahead of them as part of russia. and in the small village with its old collection of farm grainry, a cultural center and dance hall, complete with a disco ball. know the place was nearly empty of voters early. the village chairman said turnout had been very high. >> it's very important for our community. it brings hope for the future. finally, what we earn will go to us and not corrupt politicians h somewhere else. >> reporter: grand expectations and a sense of promise for a future that remains uncertain. >> woodruff: i spoke to margaret a short time ago. hello, margaret, sorry you had to talk to us in the rain. people in washington are saying the vote is fraudulent. what are they saying there about the claim. >> reporter: judy, before it started raining, we talked to people on the streets who, one, hadn't heard of the charge and two dismissed it. they said, you can't believe what you read on the internet. an hour ago, i talked to the media adviser to the prime minister who was one of those hit with sanctions from the obama administration and he hadn't even heard about it and expressed total confidence that, in the coming days, president putin and the russian will vote and it will be a done deal. whatever the international community is saying, russian supporters established new facts on the ground and given putin a huge card to play here woovr woofer in your report, you show some people are not happy with the results of this referendum. is there a chance there could be violence? >> i'd hate to predict, judy, but i don't think so at the moment. as you said, there are two sizable minorities unhappy. the tartars who are about 15%, the muslim community whose answers were deported by joseph stalin 70 years ago, but they are known as a very moderate group. then you also have ethnic ukrainians and very young people born after ukraine became an independent country. they also are unhappy and both communities seem resigned. mean while the acting president of ukraine said about ten days ago they aren't sending ukrainian troops down here to take this region back because they will have no troops to defend eastern ukraine where there's a serious threat, they believe, from russia. and russia has no incentives to form a disorder here as they're accused of doing in eastern ukraine, to the contrary it's in their interest to have things go smoothly now that they're fully in charge. so you can never say never, but i don't see it in the immediate future. so speaking of eastern ukraine, tell us where you're off to next. >> reporter: i am off to eastern ukraine where there is serious violence between pro-russian supporters, ukrainians and also it's a launch by russians against pro western ukraine-ukrainian and people have been killed, we've had mobs storming, prosecutors offices, libraries, cultural centers, and i think that is where we are going to see whether this east-west confrontation over ukraine is going to escalate further or finally, perhaps through international negotiations, be tamed. that's where i'm headed next. >> woodruff: margaret warner, stage live and safe. >> woodruff: we take a wider look now at the u.s. and russian response to crimea with: cliff kupchan, head of the russia and eurasia team at the eurasia group, a political risk consulting firm. he served in the state department during the clinton administration. and nikolas gvosdev is professor of national security studies at the u.s. naval war college. he's written extensively about russia. clif kupchan, you've had the vote in crimea, the reaction from the e.u. and the united states. wherwhere does this crisis stand right now? >> it stands at a standoff. the u.s. took dramatically sanctions against russia sanctioning the russian speaker of the upper house, really something i never thought i would see. the next shoe to fall is tomorrow when vladimir putin will likely annex -- or support annexation of crimea. that, indeed, will lead to stronger sanctions over time from both the u.s. and the e.u. someone will have to hit the offramp or we'll be back to something like the cold war. >> woodruff: nikolas gvosdev, is that what you see, a stair step situation where every so days the tensions are ramped up? >> we definitely have a stealmate at this point. let me slightly disagree with cliff. we don't know what the russians will do tomorrow. there are several steps they could take. one could be whether or not they choose to immediately bring crimea into the russian federation for which they would have to pass enabling legislation. my guess is they're going to neither say yes nor no right away, that they're going to welcome the vote, they're going to talk about the self-determination of the crimean people but that they're not necessarily going to take the step, the final step of having crimea completely break off from ukraine because, as the report indicated earlier, the ultimate russian aim in ukraine is to still get ukraine federalized and get a neutral status and crimea is still a pawn in this game. i don't necessarily if tomorrow we see crimea entering russia. my guess is we'll see a welcoming of the crimean step but perhaps not final incorporation. >> woodruff: what do you think about the intermediate scenario and the other issue raised, russia basically said to ukraine today we want you to think about splitting your country up into autonomous regions? >> well, first, what i said was that putin will support annexation of crimea. i don't think he's going to wait very long. having met this guy a number of times, i think he views ukraine, certainly crimea as his, he's going to take it back, and i see no sign in a break in his behavior and i would think, within a month, i would bet that crimea is part of russia. beyond that, russia, indeed, through a foreign ministry statement today has called for the decentralization of ukraine. they've asked for ukraine to become more neutral. on the first, i don't think that's going to happen. the e.u. and the ukrainians are going to agree on at the dense and security operation thursday. putin's role of neutralizing ukraine, that's left thization. on federalization and decentralization, many ukrainians, especially those in the maidan square, is opposed to that. i don't think proposals will go far at all. >> woodruff: nikolas gvosdev, where do you come down? the two of you have a differentperspective on how quickly putin will move to annex crimea, but what about this other gesture or statement that moscow has made toward ukraine, talking about splitting up into federal regions and just a different, more neutral posture? >> i think i think what the russians are trying to do, what they demonstrated in crimea, what they may try to do. control over the country as a whole, not just over the center and the western parts where the reach of the government currently exists, but they're going to have to deal with russia. they also want to essentially show up the west, that the west makes a lot of promises, politicians arrive, but that there's not going to be a lot of cobb concrete area. so we have an element of the game of chicken here where the russians are essentially testing to see what the metal of the european union and the united states is, how far are they willing to go to challenge russia's attempt to rewrite the fall of the soviet union in 1991, the terms under which the soviet union dissolved. >> woodruff: what is this all mean, clif kupchan, whether or not vladimir putin will go farther into ukraine beyond crimea? >> there's a real risk that he is not going to feel fed by swallowing crimea. this is about ukraine. this is about the future trajectory of ukraine. i think putin's got a long time and a short game. the long game involves trying to get a friendly president elected in the may presidential elections, seeing if ukraine can get its economic -- >> woodruff: friendly to him. yes. seeing if ukraine can get its economic house together. assuming it won't, come back to russia next year. sit back and kate till ukraine fails. there's a reasonable chance he may succeed in that. the short game, form unrest in ukraine and use it as an excuse for invasion, and that indeed is very dangerous and i think a potential risk that this man could go that route. >> woodruff: so it's a jump ball? >> well, i think unbalanced he won't go in because to have the bloodshed and somebody will tell him along the line that u.s. sanctions like in iran could bring his economic house down and if he gets that message, that's a restraint. >> woodruff: nix nirks, what do you say about putin going into the rest of ukraine? >> this isn't binary. he doesn't have to go in with forces. there's lots of the intermediate ways. we've seen russias also interacting to sanctions. looking at other options. not accidental this week the c.e.o. of the state oil company is traveling in asia, looking to try to break free of some of the economic constraints and to see whether they can have new partners. they're understanding that they may face sanctions from the west, so they're starting to diversify to see whether or not they can make up for that, if in the event europe and the united states do go further in the sanctions, much further than they decided in what was announced today. >> thank you, we'll keep watching the story. >> woodruff: the latest now on the investigation into malaysian airlines flight 370. there were more questions raised today about the pilot himself after reports confirmed that he attended the trial of a leading jailed political opposition figure, just hours before the flight. new video also showed the pilot and co-pilot passing through security detectors before they took off. lucy watson of independent television news begins our coverage. >> such routine movements would be so scrutinized. this is the pilot and the co-pilot of flight 370. mazir has known the pilot for years but now cites reasons he thinks he miff taken control of the flight. >> this is difficult. >> reporter: for ten days, speculation is great with the focus of the group. the airline doesn't want to talk to the families. >> we have been escorted out of this hotel by malaysia airlines because this is the family of where the 12 crew members are being held for over a week and not allowed to talk to the media. malaysia says the plane was deliberately diverted. a vast area is being searched by teams from 26 countries with particular focus on two possible flight paths. the last voice message from the aircraft was from the co-pilot who said, all right, good night, at 1:19 a.m. local time, 12 minutes after tracking systems sent their last transmission before they were disabled. since ten, these men continue to confront criticism. do the malaysian government admit they have made mistakes and apologized to the family? >> there have been a lot of feedback that in the circumstances they have been showing no actions. >> reporter: but actions to show no results and many questions with few real answers. on the plane was disabled. during the weekend, government officials say they believed it was disconnected before the pilot's final radio contact with air control. raising more suspicions about criminal intent. andy pasztor of the "wall street journal" is covering the investigation and joins us again from los angeles. andy, welcome back to the program. give us, right now, the status of this investigation. >> the investigation has the -- the coverage of this investigation has been depthless. there are all sorts of these are -- accident, sabotage, terrorism these are -- and you've had news reports all over the place. some show the plane rocketing up to 45,000 feet in altitude, something that a plane this heavy probably couldn't do so quickly, and others have the plane going down to 5,000 feet and diving down to 5,000 feet to avoid radar which is exactly the sweet spot, in fact, of most military radar. so i really think we have to take a step back and say what do we actually know? i think the facts are that the investigation is going relatively slowly. there haven't been any major breaks. the search for the wreckage is extremely difficult over vast areas, even perhaps as much as half of the continental united states. some of the search areas have underwater topography of 12,000 feet depth and, so, it's extremely difficult to find anything and, even if we find the wreckage in the water, the heavier parts will have gone to the bottom, the lighter parts moved by the currents, so the longer it takes, the less likely we are to find everything. so i think the reality is that we know a little bit more about the plane's movements. we don't really know anything firm about the motives or even who did it and it's really going to be a long slog, i think. >> woodruff: andy, is the malaysian government now letting in professional, experienced investigators from other countries to help them? >> i think they're getting a little better at accepting and asking for help, but i think there is still a lot of concern and criticism among u.s. aviation experts and u.s. law enforcement officials about the extent of information and the extent of cooperation and, as you mentioned at the very beginning of the show, even today, after all the criticism and all of the difficulties that the malays have had in dealing with this unpress sent investigation, the chairmannen, the c.e.o. v of the malaysian airline came forward and appeared to contradict what the federal government is saying about the timeline and satellite signals turned off. that is unmered of in an investigation. that would be tantamount to the ntsb chairman getting up, describing a significant scenario and next is the chairman of the airline that had the crash getting up and saying that's not how we think it happened. so that shows nor confusion and friction and doesn't bode well for the future of this investigation, i would say woofe.>> woodruff: what about te late report about the pilot having been active in opposition politics in malaysia, having attended the trial of a good friend who was jailed in malaysia? what's the significance of that? >> very hard to tell. i've wouleveryone is chasing it. so are we. it's difficult to know what the significance is. in the past, in other investigations including suicides of pilots, where planes crashed because pilots deliberately dove them and killed everyone on board, the pilots didn't have any special features, clear-cut marks or behaviors that would put them into a category and say they were clearly having some difficulties or extreme feelings or extreme groups that they belong to, so i think it's very hard to tell at this point. it will be certainly part of these investigations and is part of the investigation and i think it's way too early to jump to conclusions. we don't even know for sure whether these pilots were in the cockpit when all this happened. >> woodruff: and the search, you've described it as an enormous, a huge area being searched. in their cooperation from all the country and areas where this plane could have possibly gone down? >> that's probably one of the good points in the story. there are 26 countries actively working together trying to get to the same goal, and you don't have that often in any sphere of military or civil cooperation. so that is happening. but the task is absolutely daunting. if you talk to people about it, they've never even conceived of something like this, and i think your viewers shouldn't delude themselves into thinking that even if we find the wreck and even if we find the black box and this is going to be a slam dunk, if we find the black boxics if the searchers find the black box and manage to retrieve the information, the flight data recorder will show exactly how this plane behaved, when it climbed, how it dived, how fast it went, when it turned, what automation was on, what the pilots did, but the cockpit voice recorder only has two hours. it loops on itself and records over it isself and only has two hours of data. it's very possible, i think, that the two hours will have nothing of switches, the sound of the airliner going through the air, maybe engine rumblings and we won't know really what happened because there will be no conversation. that's the worst case scenario. i'm not suggesting it's certain or even likely but it's certainly possible. >> woodruff: andy pasztor with the "wall street journal." thank you. >> we thank you. >> woodruff: now, jeffrey brown has the latest report in a series we call, "where poetry lives." he and u.s. poet laureate natasha trethewey are exploring poetry in various corners of american life, seeking to connect those trips to aspects of natasha's personal experience. they recently traveled to seattle to examine a writing program for troubled teens. >> brown: for natasha trethewey, our latest trip brought back vivid memories of visiting her brother in jail after his conviction for a drug crime. >> my brother started writing poems in prison. he told me it was about making something out of the bad situation that he was in. to be able to make a poem out of that situation felt like, the act of creation, was a triumph over the experience. >> brown: it was a project aimed at that kind of triumph over difficult experience that we were visiting at the king county juvenile detention center. >> when you see the streets in your minds eye, what does that look like? >> people out and about. people buying drugs. >> brown: the pongo writing project has been working with troubled teens for nearly two decades, taking their stories and turning them into poetry. we were allowed to watch on condition we wouldn't reveal the identities of the young inmates, age 17 and younger, doing time for crimes that include theft, violence and drug offenses. >> brown: pongo volunteers, both seasoned and amateur writers themselves, meet one-on-one with inmates for an hour. asking questions: >> is there something you can think of that describes that feeling? >> i felt like i was crushed by a boulder. >> brown: and encouraging the inmates, like this 16-year-old who'd suffered a miscarriage while in prison, to find words, including metaphors, to describe events and feelings. >> brown: at sessions end, the volunteers type, and inmates add finishing touches. and the teens are given the opportunity to read their work to the group. >> when i found out i lost the baby i felt i had been crushed by a boulder. it made me think about the father. it made me realize i didn't want to have a family with someone like him. >> how did your session go? >> brown: pongo was created by richard gold 18 years ago after he left a position with microsoft. over the years he's brought the project to detention centers like this one, as well as a state psychiatric hospital and several centers for homeless youth, reaching more than 7,000 teens. >> these kids may have suffered betrayal by the people closest to them. that's one of the ultimate complexities poetry can capture. i imagine there are people out there who say that what i do isn't poetry. i think what i do is the essence of poetry. what so many of us struggle with is the unarticulated emotion in our lives. and when poetry serves that, its doing something essential for the person and for society. >> brown: later, the pongo volunteers print up the poems, and then deliver them to the teens in their cells. >> thanks for writing today. i hope to see you soon. >> brown: a selection of them are eventually published. >> that's going to be the hard part for a kid like that. >> brown: warden lynn valdez says the entire experience gives teens hope that they can overcome all of the negativity in their lives. >> they find a sense of relief and accomplishment, a reward of seeing something on paper that will be published. >> brown: valdez knows something about overcoming adversity. a former gang member, he spent time on the other side of these bars before turning his life around. he says while the teens are initially wary about poetry, they quickly come around. >> first there's a slight hesitation. they're not sure what they're doing. but once they overcome that part of it, they write down their feeling and the reward is, they've actually released something that they've repressed inside. >> brown: and you see that light bulb go off or something? >> oh, you can see it. i've been here twenty five years and this program, what it does is give them some sense of good feelings. >> brown: pongo has also won over some of those, like juvenile court judge barbara mack, who see, and sentence, these young people every day. >> i see children who come before me every day, who aren't very good at communicating. they have been buffeted by trauma that most people cant imagine. and they have never really learned how to express themselves. pongo gives them the opportunity to do that in a way that's not threatening. >> brown: in fact, natasha, who's now serving her second year as poet laureate, says she started writing poetry as a way to cope with a traumatic event: the murder of her mother when she was 19. >> and it seemed that poetry was the only thing i could turn to that would make sense of that enormous loss that i felt. sometimes people talk about poetry being therapeutic and it can be a reductive way of thinking about poetry. >> brown: that that's all it is, it makes us feel better? >> that's right. but it's so much more than that. percy bysshe shelly said poems are records of the best and happiest times and the best and happiest minds. i've given readings and people ask me at the end, do you write any happy poems? and i say "all my poems are happy." because even if i'm writing about things that seem traumatic, the making of the poem is when i'm the happiest. so if that's therapeutic, so be it. >> brown: at seattle's new horizons homeless center, young people come for recreation, a hot meal and sessions with the pongo project. the happiness of making and sharing a poem were on display at a poetry reading we attended. as were the hardships in these lives. >> here comes trouble. i hear she sleeps in a car. and when she needs a cigarette she finds half-smoked ones on the ground >> why would you make a child raise a child then break a child? never mind because the answers wont makeup for the fact that my foundation is cracked. >> brown: afterwards, we talked to the young writers who asked that their names not be used. >> i started writing because i didn't have another way to cope. >> brown: to cope? with what? >> with life. i was in foster care for about 10 years, group homes, institutions. so when i wrote, it kind of gave me a release to kind of get everything out. so it wasn't in the sense that i was trying to be an artist or be creative. it's more like this needs to get out now before something happens. all the things that i wouldn't say to people regularly, i can write it down and make it sound beautiful. >> brown: why does poetry become a place that you can say it? >> the things that would normally sound disgusting all of a sudden sound beautiful and empowering i guess. instead of feeling ashamed, its sort of like getting past the bad stuff. >> yeah, it's just taking a negative force and turning it into a positive thing. i can take all of this negative energy i feel inside myself that i would normally bottle up until eventually its going to reach a breaking point and then turn it into literal art. i looked forward to going to pongo when i was younger because i could just speak whatever was happening. i was living in group care at the time, so you weren't allowed to say whatever you wanted, you would get sent to your room. and so just to be able to scream, to cry, curse, laugh, change, whatever i needed to do. they wrote it all down and they gave you the power to take out or put it wherever you wanted. for me, that was the ultimate empowerment. >> brown: richard gold says he's now collecting poems from the project for a new anthology. he's also just published a book about the pongo method that he hopes will encourage similar programs to be set up around the country. >> woodruff: listen to some of the heartbreaking, and inspiring, poems from the pongo students, and read natasha trethewey's personal take from visiting with the teens. that's on our poetry page. >> woodruff: finally tonight, a portrait of a charismatic but divisive figure who inspired a revolution within the civil rights movement. gwen ifill recently recorded this book conversation. >> ifill: stokely carmichael marched with martin luther king, jr. he campaigned for voting rights and against the vietnam war and ultimately devoted himself to a pan-africanist movement that linked him to controversial leaders across that continent. but in most history books, he will be forever remembered as the activists who coined the term "black power" during years of racial turmoil in the united states. a new biography, "stokely: a life" tells a more complete story of a man who shaped the contemporary and sometimes conflicted civil rights movement. it's author is peniel joseph, professor of history at tufts university. welcome back to the newshour, peniel. >> thank you for having me. >> ifill: the cover of your book has a picture of stokely with fists in the air. that's the way people think about him. is there more? >> absolutely. he was a young black intellectual from trinidad, moved to the bronx when he was ten years ol'. he tested into the bronx science in new york city, majority rights, has parents who are hard-working, caribbean immigrants who instilled in him a love of social justice and underdogs. when the civil movement started in 1960, he's a student at howard university, and at howard university, he becomes a key activist who's part of the student nonviolent coordinating committee. so even before the black power movement of the '60s, he was in mississippi and alabama, and a very unique individual. >> ifill: define what black power meant to a man raised in the country where he saw black power, teachers, doctors, political leaders all around him, and grew up in the '60s. >> black power for stokely meant political self-determination. it meant black share cropsers, people like fanny from mississippi were going to be political leaders in a new world orr. he talks about in 1966 a new society has to be made in america and for him black sharecroppers in alabama, mississippi, in the delta were the people who were going to lead a new transformation in american society. >> ifill: we like to put our leaders in boxes. so malcolm x was here, martin luther king, jr. was here. where was stokely carmichael in that continuum? >> i think stokely is a bridge figure and fits in with dr. king and mal malcolm x as a figure ws on the stage of talking about human rights and pushing the envelope. he's the only major black power icon who is also a civil rights activist. so he doesn't just come into activism in the mid, late '60s when things goat get the hot. he knew dr. king -- >> ifill: they got along well. they were a good fit. stokely cries when king is assassinated. he considers him a friend, older brother, mentor, and father figure, but he was also mentored by women, so he's a very interesting figure who's also a critic of the vietnam war. he's a critic of economic injustice. so black power only tells a part of the story. >> ifill: it's interesting, even though he was considered to be the most difficult, the most controversial of the three of them in lots of ways, he lived longer than either of them did and was not assassinated like the other two. >> both king and malcolm died at 39. stokely carmichael moves to west africa, goes to guinea. in a way, moving to west africa where he was pan-africanist and revolutionary, it dims his eye of the united states. what happens of carmichael where he married the african singer, moves to west africa, he continues to organize but not in the united states. >> ifill: but there's a loop from going to an organizer in the south to being almost an ex patriot in guinea. >> it's based on his political experiences. he's organizing black folks in mississippi, and becomes a national mobilizer. one of the key things that happens since the trip in '67 around the world -- goes to cuba, meets with fidel castro, goes to nigeria, but in africa finds his identity, meets with the proposed president of ghana and decides he will return to africa and this will be the base for revolution. >> ifill: where do the black panthers fit into in continuum? >> he found the first black panther county in lions county in mississippi. he becomes honorary prime minister of the black panther party to have self-defense and leads the charge to free the imprisoned minister of the defense of the bbp. >> ifill: was there a point in time when he transferred from being non-violent to violent and feeling that was a legitimate response? >> we have to turn our back on this country. >> by the same we look at carmichael as a black powerful figure in '68, he's talking about armed rebellion and revolution and it will take armed struggle to fulfill the pan-african revolution. he's never a philosophical believer in non-violence but believes it's a tactic and adopts the discipline of non-violence. >> ifill: we spent time talking about the anniversary of the march on washington. >> yes. >> ifill: was he part of that? he called it a middle class picnic. >> he did but he helped organize a mississippi activist who came to the march on washington because he was working in mississippi, and this year is the 50th of the civil rights act and the 50th freedom summer and stokely carmichael was one of the key activists and organizers of freedom summer. when the three civil rights workers go missing, stokely and different activists go looking for him. so he's a key activist in freedom summer. >> ifill: stokely carmichael was charismatic in leading people with him, but h how shoud he be remembered? >> as one of the watershed figures of 20th century. this activist who believed in human rights who, when he was 19 years old, was arrested for the first time, bun of over 40 arrests for civil rights demonstration, puts his life and body on the line to try to achieve citizenship, democracy, human rights for all. so i think it's an incredible story about young people who persevere and believe that the united states, really the world, could be changed. >> ifill: certainly an undertold story. "stokely: a life" is the name of the book. thank you. thank you for having me. >> woodruff: again, the major developments of the day. russian annexation of crimea appeared imminent after president vladimir putin declared the region independent of ukraine. that followed a referendum in crimea on sunday. the u.s. and the european union slapped sanctions on high- ranking russian and crimean officials. and more international investigators arrived in malaysia, as the search for a missing jetliner spread across a vast expanse of land and ocean. and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff, we'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us here at the pbs newshour, thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> at bae systems, our pride and dedication show in everything we do; from electronics systems to intelligence analysis and cyber- operations; from combat vehicles and weapons to the maintenance and modernization of ships, aircraft, and critical infrastructure. knowing our work makes a difference inspires us everyday. that's bae systems. that's inspired work. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org . this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and susie gharib brought to you in part by. >> thestreet.com. featuring stephanie link who shares her investment strategies stock picks with action alert plus. the portfolio she manages with jim cramer. you can learn more thestreet.com/nbr. >> bullish response, with the dow snapping a five-day losing streak to post the biggest gain in two weeks but how long will the rallies last? >> big decision. janet yellen will lead the policy meeting as head of the federal research this week and she may be ready to changes. >> and marry barra makes a bl

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