Poet rules over Troy West, contract killer (4,7)
I believe the answer is:
walt whitman
'poet' is the definition.
(I know that Walt Whitman is a poet)
'rules over troy west contract killer' is the wordplay.
'rules' becomes 'law' (I've seen this before).
'over' shows that the letters should be reversed in order.
'troy' becomes 't' (abbreviation - troy is a unit of weight).
'west contract killer' becomes 'whitman' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'law' back-to-front is 'wal'.
'wal'+'t'+'whitman'='WALT WHITMAN'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for walt whitman that I've seen is " American poet".)