The poet may put it over shortly (3)
I believe the answer is:
oer
'the' is the definition.
I can't judge whether this defines the answer.
'poet may put it over shortly' is the wordplay.
'poet may' becomes 'o' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'put' says to put letters next to each other.
'it' becomes 'e' ('e' can mean 'electronic' which is similar to 'IT').
'shortly' says to take the final letters.
The last letter of 'over' is 'r'.
'o'+'e'+'r'='OER'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for oer that I've seen is " Above (poetic)".)