The central idea of the poem "Phizzog" by Carl Sandburg is perhaps that we should each make the most of what we have. In the first line of the poem, the speaker introduces the focus of the poem, which is the "face" of the person that the poem is addressed to. In the second line of the poem, the speaker uses a British colloquial term, "phizzog," to refer to the person's face. The speaker uses a metaphor when he says that the person "carr(ies) around" their face, or phizzog.

The third and fourth lines of the poem are written as a rhetorical question: "You never picked it out for yourself / at all, at all - did you?" This question suggests that the person had no choice as to the face they have. The last part of the question ("did you?") could imply, however, that the speaker is wondering, incredulously, about whether the person really did choose their face.

The next two lines are also written as a question, which reiterates the suggestion of the previous question, namely that the person had no choice as to the face that they have. The fact that the speaker repeats this suggestion perhaps implies that there is something very peculiar about the person's face, so much so that the person must have been given the face, as opposed to choosing it for themself.

In lines seven and eight, the speaker imagines what the person must have been told when they were given the face. The speaker imagines that they must have been told, "Here's yours, now / go see what you can do with it." The implication here is that the face is so peculiar that to do anything with it constitutes something of a challenge.

In lines nine and ten, the speaker says that the face must have been handed to the person "like a package." These lines simply continue the conceit that the person's face was a given to them by somebody else. In lines eleven and twelve, the speaker imagines that this "package" must have been marked with the words, "No goods exchanged after being / taken away." This compounds the aforementioned implication that the person's face is so peculiar that, given the choice, they would inevitably exchange it for another.

The final line of the poem, "This face you got," is the same as the first line of the poem. The repetition of the line emphasizes that the person is stuck with the face they have been given. The person has "got" this face, whether they like it or not.