Kirk's lyrics drew comparisons with those of other poets, whose work he sometimes parodied: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Eugene Field, and James Whitcomb Riley.

[4] For eighteen years Kirk was distributed by the International Features Syndicate and reached a national audience as he wrote on subjects as diverse as baseball, temperance, women's suffrage and divorce.

One can, for instance, read his account of Fred Merkle's infamous blunder [6] or his rhyming tribute to the Flying Dutchman, Honus Wagner.

[7] The Unforgettable Season by Gordon H. Fleming recounts the 1908 National League pennant race through contemporary press coverage by Kirk and others.

[12] At the time of its publication one reviewer wrote: "Novelty and freshness, and no little ingenuity as a parodist, salute us in this volume of dialect verse hailing from the haunts of the lumberjack or, more locally, northern Wisconsin and Minnesota, where dwell so many neo-Americans of Scandinavian birth.

[17] El Brendel, Yogi Yorgesson, Stan Boreson and countless others have followed in Kirk's footsteps, and there is still a receptive audience — especially among Scandinavian Americans — for tales of lumberjacks and sergeants with more heart than brain.