The poem "the Secret" by Denise Levertov deals with authorial intention and artistic expression. The first person narrator of the poem credits two girls for discovering the secret in one of the poems the narrator wrote ("I who don't know the, secret wrote, the line. They told me"). However, what the secret is and which line it is that contains the secret remains unclear.
The first-person narrator suggests that the girls will forget what the secret was very quickly. They will not remember the line, nor the name of the poem. This suggests that the secret is ephemeral. It can only be understood and appreciated for a brief moment. The poem seems to suggest that it lies within the very nature of the secret that it is ephemeral and can only be discovered through serendipity.
More significantly, the first-person narrator states that, "I love them, for finding what, I can't find, and for loving me
for the line I wrote." This passage suggests that the author does not have a specific authorial intent in writing her poems, as she suggests that she is incapable of finding the meaning that the girls find in her poems. However, because others find value in her writing (if only briefly) she finds writing poems worthwhile. Overall, the poem seems to suggest that artistic expression is itself a secret that can only be discovered by the beholder, not the artist.
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