“Burning the Old Year” touches upon themes of permanence, absence, regret, and the passage of time. Rich imagery, metaphor, and symbolism carry the poem, and its message connects what people leave behind and what they carry forward year after year. The reader can interpret the speaker of the poem as Nye. The poem offers a strong sense of universality so that any reader, anywhere, can potentially understand and relate to the actions and themes of the poem.

The first stanza begins with the speaker describing the burning of letters and notes at the end of the year. Nye writes, “Letters swallow themselves in seconds” (Line 1), using personification to describe the disintegration of the letters she is burning. She depicts notes left by friends as being “transparent scarlet paper” (Line 3). Notes written between friends are likely not written on transparent paper, and the reader can infer that the transparency and color of the paper symbolizes both triviality and flammability. The transparent paper is red, connecting the notes to the color of fire and the physicality of the burning.

The stanza ends with Nye writing that the letters and notes “sizzle like moth wings, / marry the air” (Lines 4-5).