The article examines the linguistic features of the use of poetic text in teaching the Russian language and highlights the criteria for working with foreign students in the classroom. The main goal of the study is to attain the meaning of the word, improve the culture of speech, develop an attentive attitude to the word and a real taste for reading among students. This goal cannot be achieved without including poetry in the process of teaching Russian as a foreign language. As a part of the study, the algorithm of the teacher's work in teaching analytical reading was determined. Using the example of V. Bryusov's poem "Kon’ Bled", methods of analyzing a poem for teaching advanced foreign students have been developed, which, on the one hand, allow reflecting the specifics of this type of analysis and, on the other hand, demonstrates the possibilities of using a literary text in teaching Russian as a foreign language on the basis of Russian poets’ creativity. As part of the experiment, foreign undergraduates of Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University were offered tasks based on working with a poetic text, according to the developed algorithm. The proposed blocks of tasks are necessary for students to replenish their vocabulary, to understand the essence of the poem more deeply – as some tasks are aimed at understanding the meaning, while other groups of tasks are aimed at understanding the topic, images of the author's position. The highlighted linguistic features of the poetic text and the criteria for working in the classroom with foreign students when teaching the Russian language, as well as the stages of the algorithm for working with a poetic text, can be useful in teaching foreign students.