Witty peer, or what he might do to avoid being prosaic (5,6)

'witty peer or what he might do to avoid' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I can't tell whether it can be defined by this definition.

'being prosaic' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
'being' could be 'poet' (poet is a kind of being) and 'poet' is found within the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).

Can you help me to learn more?