Poetry and the Practical was published in 1996 by The University of Arkansas Press as part of The Simms Series.  Edited with an introduction and notes by James Everett Kibler Jr., the book contains a lecture written by Simms between the years of 1851-54, which expanded from one to three parts.  Kibler summarizes the lecture as “a clear, forceful, inspired defense of poetry against those who would relegate it to the margins of life.”[1]  In a 12 November 1850 letter to Evert Augustus Duyckinck, Simms made first mention of the lecture: “I recieve [sic] another application for a public Lecture ...