Ferlinghetti's "Autobiography" [one of seven "oral messages" in A Coney Island of the Mind] is a highly and mockingly-learned riddle poem…. [It] is a witty testament to Ferlinghetti's seriously held poetic faith….

[One] cannot fully appreciate the poem without knowing that Ferlinghetti has written a "pied" or medley poem after the riddling manner of the ancient Celtic unofficial bards or minstrels, and that it contains allusions not only to ancient Celtic poetic history, but also to even more ancient pre-Cymric, old-Goidelic, myth. These are suggested by the presence of individual lines in Ferlinghetti's poem which are taken exactly from English translations of three ancient Celtic riddle poems. These three poems are 1) the Hanes Taliesen (The Tale of Taliesin), 2) the Câd Goddeu (The Battle of the Trees), and 3) the Song of Amergin. (p. 25)

[It is necessary] to explain what these lines "plagiarized" from translations of three ancient Celtic...