Trethewey and Linked Poems

I just read Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard and it was remarkable. I'd read poems from the collection before, but this was my first time reading it straight through, which was a completely different experience. Trethewey's poems are in four unnamed sections (including a one-poem section that functions as a prologue) that are introduced by telling epigraphs. However, they could easily (to the detriment of the collection) be named Prologue, Mother, Mississippi, and My Life in Mississippi because the sections themselves are so cohesive.

This cohesion (and the cohesion of the book itself) led me to think about the propensity for books of poems to contain an overarching narrative. I often enjoy books that employ this method, because it leads to an even greater meaning and to reading ease. I think that if the poems can stand alone (and these certainly can), having a book of linked poems can increase the reader's joy because it is a continued unfolding instead of a segmented or choppy read (as is sometimes the case with books of poems that have no narrative or stylistic link).

I could be wrong, but I think books of linked poems are a relatively new phenomenon (perhaps begun by some of the confessional poets). There have always been book-length poems that have a continuous narrative, but that is really not the same thing. Linked poems are similar to a novel in which each poem constitutes a chapter (though linked poems tend to be less linear than novels and can repeatedly discuss a single aspect of a subject in a way that would stunt a novel's movement).

To be honest, I don't think that I could create a book around this model. I am working on a chapbook of How to Break Up poems, but I think a book-length manuscript from that same material would be boring to read (of course, the HTBU poems don't have as much power as Native Guard in either subject or skill).

I wonder, however, if books of linked poems will become the new standard in poetry books. I know that there are contemporary books that do not follow this model, but I think that linked poems are becoming more and more prevalent — and are also very well-received. What do you guys think? Are linked poems the future?