The Foundation of Poetry Appreciation in Poetry Recitation Videos by Indonesian Language Subject Teachers

This paper delves into the essence of poetry appreciation, both from the perspective of educators and students, within the context of videos created by teachers participating in the Student Creativity Program of the Doctoral Study Program in Humanities Sciences at Universitas Gadjah Mada. Drawing from rich poetic theories, including those of Aristotle, Lotman, Wellek and Warren, Roland Barthes, Riffaterre, and further buttressed by Umberto Eco’s comprehensive semiotic framework, this paper focuses on an exploration with the underlying premise that a truly exceptional poem possesses multi-layered meanings, each layer coexisting harmoniously without negating the others. This allows readers, depending on their unique backgrounds, to engage with different strata of meaning as well as the poem as a whole. In a broader sense, the method employed is the structural-semiotic approach, which functions both heuristically and hermeneutically in tandem. The findings affirm that the poems selected for joint exploration by teachers and students indeed exhibit this multi-layered signification. However, it is intriguing to observe that students, influenced by their age and proficiency, tend to gravitate towards the most superficial layer, the direct or referential linguistic stratum, in their reading practices. This phenomenon highlights the need for a complex understanding of how the multi-layered beauty of poetry can be unlocked, appreciated, and shared in educational settings.