The symbol of fire in “Burning the Old Year” has various interpretations, from the literal to the metaphorical. In the first stanza of the poem, Nye depicts the burning of different papers, notes, and letters as she passes into the new year. Fire, here in its concrete form, burns and destroys trivial articles Nye has collected during the past year. She is burning them as a means of physically destroying them, as well metaphorically “burning” the memories associated with them.

In the second stanza, Nye writes, “So much of any year is flammable” (Line 6), describing how memories of the smaller, more mundane aspects of life are easily forgotten and lost, destroyed in the “fire.” Nye uses the metaphor “Orange swirling flame of days” (Line 8) to aid in this concept of lost time. The reader could interpret this destruction of items—and their associated memories—as both a conscious and subconscious act. Perhaps she is burning them because she does not want the memories of the people and events associated with them, but she could also be burning them because she does not remember the significance of when they were written and is simply getting rid of the clutter.