It turns out Atwood’s poetry book, published in 1964, but there is no The Circle Game poem in the book. Mitchell’s song was released in 1966 and has no obvious connection. However, in researching to see if Atwood had written a Circle Game poem, I discovered she did write a poem titled The City Planners, which I had never come across before. The poem is very critical of 1960s city planners (and dare I say, developers, too) which ironically was the subject of Mitchell’s song Big Yellow Taxi, released in 1970.