The present poetry programme ]or C~inese undergraduates of English has some negative effects. These are caused by factors like idea-based and cultural value-based approaches, text- selection criteria, and the ways of teaching connected to the approaches. This paper takes a ianguage-based viewpoint to carry out a discussion on these factors as well as on the features of poetry as a deviation so as to develop some ideas of a possiblerationale for the improvement of teaching poetry in the Chinese EFL situation.