The article is devoted to regular word-formation in the fictional practice. The purpose of the work is to reveal the possibilities of the regular word-formation system based on the poetry of Joseph Brodsky. Within the framework of this study, we consider the concept of “productivity” and the approaches to differentiation between word-formation type and word-formation model definitions. We have formulated the meaning of the term “a word-formation category”. The article studies the structural and semantic aspects of regular derivatives: using the method of word-formation analysis, we have identified productive word-formation types for different parts of speech, actual categorical meanings and frequency morphemes. The article identifies stylistic features of specific morphemes and analyses the combination of different-style derivatives when the image and function of lexemes that implement different word-building types are created. In the corpus of regular derivatives, we reveal the productivity of “color” paradigms, which emphasizes their semantic importance for the poetic imagery of Joseph Brodsky. In the course of our study, we noted derivational lexemes of a different order – potential and occasional. Their basis is the usual system of language, which confirms the high potential of regular word formation for a poetic text. The article concludes that regular derivatives play an important role in constructing poetic imagery.