and i love to write. >> brown: quintin told us he wanted to make sure each line is a deep thought. >> the deep, deep thoughts that i put in my poems are not about me, it's about what affects everybody else, not just me. >> brown: what kinds of things? >> like i would say "my poem is i would say, "my poem is a monster scaring you till the lights are on." so when i been scared or had a nightmare and turned the lights on, till someone was there for me. >> brown: that ever happen to you? >> yeah. >> brown: afterwards, i asked natasha what had struck her most. >> it was a sense of power that they have from being able to imagine, to create, to name themselves, to speak for themselves-- as the creed says, it did remind me of being in my school and learning the work of poets, african-american poets, that i've carried with me since then. and i carried it with me later on, particularly when i was bussed later on into a white school in eight grade. one of the poems that particularly struck me was langston hughes' "i too sing america." and going to that school, where people didn't want us, i coul