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 [|Image From Creative Commons] ||> ==Bio== Carl Sandburg was born on January 6, 1878 in Galesburg, Illinois. Sandburg's school career ended when he was thirteen because he needed to work to help support his low income family. Though, at the age of twenty, he furthered his studies at Lombarg College in Galesburg. During his time at Lombarg, Sandburg was in service for the army during the Spanish-American War. Sandburg began writing poetry at the age of seventeen; much of his work about the everyday working class people in a plain and simple language. Often times, he descibed mills, farms, and factories. He wrote his poems in free verse, which doesn't have to rhyme or have a definite rythmn. Though, many times he would give recitals to the public in a song fashion by accompanying his guitar. Carl then moved to Chicago in 1913. He worked for the Chicago Daily News as a reporter. He published many of his poems while in Chicago like, Chicago Poems(1916), Smoke and Steel(1920), and The People, Yes(1936). During his life, Sandburg earned two Pulitzer Prizes: one for his history book, //Abraham Lincoln: The War Years// in 1940, and one for his collection of poems, //Complete Poems//, in 1951. Towards the end of his life, Sandburg wrote one of his final works, the novel, Remembrance Rock, and published it in 1948. Before he died in Flat Rock, North Carolina, on July 22, 1967, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. ||
 * ==Carl Sandburg ==

Poetry links
[|Sandburg's Last Home from Creative Commons] ||
 * * [|Lost]
 * [|The Answer]
 * [|Back Yard]
 * [|Who Am I?]
 * [|Happiness] ||> [[image:CS.jpg width="229" height="199"]]

Explication
Explication of "[|The Junk Man]"



The poem, The Junk Man, explains using a metaphor of an old clock and a Junk man, explaining how death is not bad, but good and how man should not be afraid of it. In the poem, Sandburg implies that he is a religious man when he says, "I'm glad God saw Death, and gave Death a job taking care of all who are tired of living" (l. 1-2). The old clock is a metaphor for old man, "being worn and slow" (l. 3). Old mans' mind has started going bad so it "goes on ticking and telling the wrong time from hour to hour" (l. 4). Because the old are physically not able to do hard work anymore, they become "bum" so people "mock" them and say they are not able to do the things they once could. He personifies the clock as if it were living, giving it the ability to be happy when the Junk Man comes and it feels the warm embrace of the Junk Man taking it away.

Sandburg uses the metaphor of the Junk man to symbolize Death. Death comes to all man, but Sandburg refers to it as nothing to fear. When man gets old, life seems to stop giving and starts taking. Man gets tired not only physically, but emotionally, and all man really wants is to rest. Death sees that man does not "belong" anymore, because now everything is falling apart and life it is no longer a happy thing, but a depressing reality. The junk man, or death, relieves human-kind of its pain and anguish and gives human-kind the rest it was waiting for.

